Job 37:3

3. He directeth He letteth it (the thunder) loose; or, better yet, sendeth it forth.

Unto the ends of the earth “Wings” or “fringes” of the earth; same as in Job 38:13. The word might be rendered “boundaries,” the same word in the Arabic ( kanafa) being employed to express bounding. In Isaiah 11:12, and in Ezekiel 7:2, the word is associated with the numeral four, and is evidently used for the cardinal points. Comp. Revelation 7:1; Revelation 20:8. In the view of Renan, the earth is here compared “to a carpet spread out; its extremities being in some sort the border of the carpet.” The Greeks in the time of Eratosthenes, so Rosenmuller states, (Bib. Geog., Job 1:3,) compared the shape of the earth to that of an outspread chlamys, or cloak. At one time Gesenius supposed that the Hebrews had, in like manner, erred in taking the earth to be of a quadrangular form. This opinion he afterward retracted by advancing the more correct view, that the Hebrews regarded the four “ends of the earth” as equivalent to the four quarters of heaven. (See his Com. on Isaiah 11:12.) Winer, however, (Rwb., 1:340,) thinks it to be exceedingly doubtful that the Hebrews ever formed a fixed opinion as to the shape of the earth.

His lightning unto the ends of the earth We have been assured by a celebrated Abyssinian traveller, that he has seen flashes in that country extending from horizon to horizon, and which he could not estimate as under fifty or one hundred miles in length. SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, in Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., 14:662.