Job 26:14

14. Parts Ends; “the extreme point;” “the border.” Exodus 25:19; Exodus 28:7. The Arabian schoolmen called our present knowledge the ends, or off-cuttings of things. “They compared it to the threads which stick out from the lower or wrong side of the tapestry which the great Artificer is weaving above.” Compare 1 Corinthians 13:9; 1 Corinthians 13:12. But how little a portion, etc. Literally, what a whisper-word is that we hear. For shemets, “whisper,” see note on Job 4:12. It was a pleasing conceit of Pythagoras that the heavenly bodies in their motions emitted sounds which were blended together in musical harmony. The reason we do not hear it. Cicero says, is because “the sound is so loud as to transcend our power of hearing.” “Tantus sonitus ut eum aures hominum capere non possint.” De Republica, Job 6:18. Kepler’s discoveries give countenance to the very old conception of the philosophers. Schlottmann’s interpretation, that what we hear of God’s ways and works is but an echo of the distant thunder, falls greatly below the thought of Job, whose figure is that of a whispered word compared with the mightier thunder, “the thunder of his power.” May it not be just as true still, now that science has brought to our knowledge “a hundred million worlds,” that these are the outskirts of his universe, the fringes of his royal garment, “the ends of his ways?”