Yahweh: The Storehouses of the Snow
22 Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, 23 which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? 24 By what way is the lightning distributed, or the east wind scattered on the earth? 25 Who has cut a channel for the flood water, or the path for the thunderstorm, 26 to cause it to rain on a land where there is no man, on the wilderness, in which there is no man, 27 to satisfy the waste and desolate ground, to cause the tender grass to grow? 28 Does the rain have a father? Or who fathers the drops of dew? 29 Whose womb did the ice come out of? Who has given birth to the gray frost of the sky? 30 The waters become hard like stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen. 31 “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loosen the cords of Orion? 32 Can you lead the constellations out in their season? Or can you guide the Bear with her cubs? 33 Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you establish its dominion over the earth? 34 “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover you? 35 Can you send out lightnings, that they may go? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who has put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who has given understanding to the mind? 37 Who can count the clouds by wisdom? Or who can pour out the containers of the sky, 38 when the dust runs into a mass, and the clods of earth stick together? 39 “Can you hunt the prey for the lioness, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, 40 when they crouch in their dens, and lie in wait in the thicket? 41 Who provides for the raven his prey, when his young ones cry to God, and wander for lack of food?
God describes rain falling where nobody lives and food carried to young ravens, and the point of the tour is that the world is not organized around human beings.
The questioning moves to weather, and then to something a reader is meant to stumble over.
God asks who cut the channel for the flood and the path for the thunderstorm — and gives the destination: to cause it to rain on a land where there is no man, on the wilderness, in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate ground, to cause the tender grass to grow Job 38:25–27.
The phrase where there is no man is repeated in consecutive lines. Rain is being delivered, at cost and by design, to a place with nobody in it, so that grass can grow where nobody will see it.
That is the answer to the friends' entire framework. Their world is a machine for paying people what they are owed, and it has no room for anything that is not a transaction with a human being. God's first move is to point at empty country and say that he waters it.
The questions about ice and frost are put as questions about parentage. Does the rain have a father? Or who fathers the drops of dew? Whose womb did the ice come out of? Job 38:28–29. The imagery of birth runs through the whole speech — the sea from the womb, the frost given birth — and it is warmer than the courtroom Job asked for.
The stars come next, and Job had named these constellations himself in chapter 9 Job 9:9. Now they are put to him as a test of grip: can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loosen the cords of Orion? Can you lead the constellations out in their season? Job 38:31–32. He knows their names. He cannot move them.
One question in the middle is not about the sky at all, and it is easy to miss: who has put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who has given understanding to the mind? Job 38:36. The chapter on wisdom said it could not be mined or bought Job 28:12–15; here God says he puts it inside people.
Then the animals begin, and the transition is deliberate. The hunt for the lioness, and the appetite of the young lions when they crouch in their dens Job 38:39–40.
And the last verse of the chapter is the one that carries the argument. Who provides for the raven his prey, when his young ones cry to God, and wander for lack of food? Job 38:41.
A raven is an unclean bird and a scavenger, and its chicks are described as crying to God — and being answered. Job has been crying to God and getting nothing Job 30:20. He is being shown, without a word of application, that the cry of a hungry scavenger's young is heard and provided for.
Nothing is explained. What is being established is that the one running this world is attentive to things that have no claim on him, in places nobody visits.
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