Job 38:12

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days;.... Job had lived to see many a morning, but it never was in his power to command one; he had been in such circumstances as to wish for morning light

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; Passing from creation to phenomena in the existing inanimate world. Verse 12. Hast thou - as God daily does.

The morning, i.e. the morning light, or the sun, which is the cause of it. Didst thou create the sun, and appoint the order and succession of day and night? Since thy days; since thou wast born. This work was not done by thee, but by me, and that long before thou wast born. To know his place; to observe the punctual time when, and the point of the heavens where, it should arise; which varies every day. Was this thy contrivance or mine?

Job 38:12 Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; [and] caused the dayspring to know his place;Ver. 12. Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days] It may be thou wilt say, These are ancient things, done long before I was born; but ask me of things within my reach and remembrance. Well, then, what sayest thou to the sunrising? Hast thou either lengthened or hastened it at any time since thou wert born, causing it to rise at such or such an hour, in such or such a point of heaven, according to the various degrees and situations of the zodiac? No; this is more than ever any man could do. "The day is thine, the night also is thine," saith David: "thou hast prepared the light and the sun. Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter," Psalms 74:16-17. If all the emperors and potentates of the earth should conjoin their threes to hinder or hasten the rising of the sun, they could never do it. Joshua did indeed stop the course of the sun; but that was by the power of God set awork by his faithful prayer; whence one crieth out, O admirabilem piarum precum vim ac poteutiam, quibus etiam coelestia cedunt! Oh the admirable power of prayer, force of faith, which is such as the visible heavens are sensible of, and giveth way to! how then should earth or hell stand before it? And caused the dayspring to know his place] The word dayspriug comes from blackness; for it is not ηωςηνοδακτυλος, clear light at first; but κροκοπεπλος, rather dark than light, Aurora sic a nigrore dicta qui eam comitatur.

(12) And caused the dayspring to know his place.—Changing, as it does, from day to day with the changing seasons.

Verse 12. Hast thou commanded the morning] This refers to dawn or morning twilight, occasioned by the refraction of the solar rays by means of the atmosphere; so that we receive the light by degrees, which would otherwise burst at once upon our eyes, and injure, if not destroy, our sight; and by which even the body of the sun himself becomes evident several minutes before he rises above the horizon. Caused the dayspring to know his place] This seems to refer to the different points in which daybreak appears during the course of the earth's revolution in its orbit; and which variety of points of appearing depends on this annual revolution. For, as the earth goes round the sun every year in the ecliptic, one half of which is on the north side of the equinoctial, and the other half on its south side, the sun appears to change his place every day. These are matters which the wisdom of God alone could plan, and which his power alone could execute. It may be just necessary to observe that the dawn does not appear, nor the sun rise exactly in the same point of the horizon, two successive days in the whole year, as he declines forty-three degrees north, and forty-three degrees south, of east; beginning on the 21st of March, and ending on the 22d of December; which variations not only produce the places of rising and setting, but also the length of day and night. And by this declination north and south, or approach to and recession from the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the solar light takes hold of the ends of the earth, Job 38:13, enlightens the arctic and antarctic circles in such a way as it would not do were it always on the equinoctial line; these tropics taking the sun twenty-three and a half degrees north, and as many south, of this line.

4–38. A survey of the inanimate creation, the wonders of earth and sky—the earth, Job 38:4-18; the heavens, Job 38:18-38

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days - That is, in thy lifetime hast thou ordered the light of the morning to shine, and directed its beams over the world?

c. If so be Job was not in being when the foundations of the world were laid, perhaps he has, during his short life, shown his power and skill in carrying on the works of nature; has, at least once,