Job 28:25

To make the weight for the wind,.... He indeed makes the wind itself, holds it in his fists, and brings it forth out of his treasures, and lets it go, or restrains it, at his pleasure; he gives it an

To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. God has adjusted the weight of the winds, so seemingly imponderable, lest, if too weighty or too light, injury should be caused.

To make the weight for the winds; which of themselves are most light, and without any weight, and inconstant, and such as no creature can order or govern them: but God manageth them all by weight, appointing to every wind that blows its season, its proportion, its bounds and limits, when, and where, and how much, and how long each wind shall blow, and for what ends; whether for mercy, as to refresh men in hot seasons with its gentle gales, to cherish the fruits of the earth, to waft ships on the sea to their desired havens, &c.; or whether for judgment, as to corrupt the air, and thereby the bodies of men, and fruits of the earth, to blow down houses upon their inhabitants, as he was pleased to deal with my poor unhappy children. He only doth all these things, and he only knows why he doth them. He instanceth but in some few of God’ s works, and those which seem to be most trivial, and casual, and uncertain, that thereby he might more strongly imply and prove that God doth the same in other things which are more considerable, and are managed by more constant causes and certain methods; that he doth all things in the most exact order, and weight, and measure. He weigheth: but it seems a very improper speech, to weigh things by measure; and therefore this word may more fitly be otherwise rendered, he examineth, or disposeth, or fitteth, or directeth, for so this verb is elsewhere used, as 21:2. The waters, to wit, the rain waters, as appears from the next verse, which God layeth up in his store-houses, or bottles, the clouds, and thence draws them forth, and sends them down upon the earth in such times and proportions as he thinks fit, and as may serve his several designs and ends. By measure; for liquid things are examined by measure, as other things are by weight; and here is both weight and measure, to signify with what exact and perfect wisdom God doth govern the world.

Job 28:25 To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.Ver. 25. To make the weight for the winds] He ordereth wind and water, rain and thunder, Pondere, mensura, numero, tacit omnia, - therefore wisdom is with him. The winds he weigheth in a balance; then when they seem to blow where they list, piercing through the air with their violent blasts, God sets them their bounds, and appoints them their proportion. He sends them out as his posts, and makes them pace orderly. And he weigheth the waters by measure] Both the rain (not a drop falls in vain in a wrong place, or at random, but by a divine decree, as a witness of his wisdom and goodness, Acts 17:14) and the sea and rivers; neither do the winds blow nor the waters flow without the Lord, who is the great moderator, who measureth the waters in the hollow of his hand, &c., Isaiah 40:12.

Verse 25. To make the weight for the winds] God has given an atmosphere to the earth, which, possessing a certain degree of gravity perfectly suited to the necessities of all animals, plants, vegetables, and fluids, is the cause in his hand of preserving animal and vegetative life through the creation; for by it the blood circulates in the veins of animals, and the juices in the tubes of vegetables. Without this pressure of the atmosphere, there could be no respiration; and the elasticity of the particles of air included in animal and vegetable bodies, without this superincumbent pressure, would rupture the vessels in which they are contained, and destroy both kinds of life. So exactly is this weight of the winds or atmospheric air proportioned to the necessities of the globe, that we find it in the mean neither too light to prevent the undue expansion of animal and vegetable tubes, nor too heavy to compress them so as to prevent due circulation. See at the end of the chapter. See Clarke on Job 28:28. And he weigheth the waters by measure.] He has exactly proportioned the aqueous surface of the earth to the terrene parts, so that there shall be an adequate surface to produce, by evaporation, moisture sufficient to be treasured up in the atmosphere for the irrigation of the earth, so that it may produce grass for cattle, and corn for the service of man. It has been found, by a pretty exact calculation, that the aqueous surface of the globe is to the terrene parts as three to one; or, that three-fourths of the surface of the globe is water, and about one-fourth earth. And other experiments on evaporation, or the quantity of vapours which arise from a given space in a given time, show that it requires such a proportion of aqueous surface to afford moisture sufficient for the other proportion of dry land. Thus God has given the waters by measure, as he has given the due proportion of weight to the winds.

25. to make the weight for the winds] Or, making (when he made), appointing the winds their greater or less force. The idea is of course that God weighed the winds themselves, i. e. defined their bulk exactly, not that, in modern language, he gave to each its weight or pressure, though the sense is little different. and he weigheth the waters by measure] Or, and he meted out the waters by measure. The “waters” are the rains, Job 28:26. The “winds” and “waters” are examples, taken to represent all, of the agencies and forces of creation. These were and continue all weighed and measured, adjusted and directed by God. The second half of the verse explains the first. In the first half it is not God’s abstract omniscience that is referred to, but His universal oversight as Creator; and the sense of the whole verse, which supports the assertion that God has Wisdom (Job 28:23), is not that God must be in possession of Wisdom in order to be Creator, which without Wisdom He could not be, but rather that His being Creator enables us to understand how Wisdom is or comes to be in His possession. Wisdom in this passage, as in other parts of Scripture where it is spoken of, is properly the idea or conception lying behind or under the fixed order of the universe, the world-plan. This fixed order itself with all its phenomena and occurrences is nothing but God fulfilling Himself in many ways, but these ways may be reduced to one conception, and this is Wisdom, which is thus conceived as a thing having an objective existence of its own. Naturally such an objective thing is apt to be personified and may be “seen,” “established,” “searched out” and the like. In the same way the question may be put, Where is Wisdom to be found? and the answer given that it can be found nowhere. This question and answer merely mean that man cannot attain to intellectual apprehension of the idea of the universe, nor understand the principle underlying the phenomena and events of the world and human life.

To make the weight for the winds - That is, to weigh the winds and to measure the waters - things that it would seem most difficult to do. The idea here seems to be, that God had made all things by measure and by rule.

25. The weight for the winds — In the four representative instances which Job adduces out of the great storehouse of like wonder-workings, wisdom is no more manifested in the adjustment of the weight