Job 37

While yet the storm gathers along the sky, Elihu is led to speak of other phenomena of nature which also display the power and wisdom of God. Everywhere appears a benevolent design, even in the fearful lightning’s path. God wields the forces of nature for the moral weal of man. Our ignorance of the simplest processes of nature (Job 37:14-19) should teach us calm acquiescence in the divine will, for there is light in the darkest clouds. Men should, therefore, not withhold themselves from a doxology of praise (Job 37:23) to the terribly majestic Being whose acts never transcend the bounds of justice and of right. Humboldt, the consummate scientist, thus speaks of “the thirty-seventh chapter of the ancient, if not the antemosaic, Book of Job: The meteorological processes which take place in the atmosphere, the formation and solution of vapour according to the changing direction of the wind, the play of its colours, the generation of hail and of the rolling thunder, are described with individualizing accuracy; and many questions are propounded which we, in the present state of our physical knowledge, may, indeed, be able to express under more scientific definitions, but scarcely to answer satisfactorily.” Cosmos, 2:414.