Job 37:22

22. Fair weather זהב , gold. Literally, out of the north cometh gold, and is rendered by the Septuagint, “clouds shining like gold.” It would certainly have been a descent from this sublime description of an Eastern thunderstorm for the poet to stop for the mere record of a well attested fact, that gold, in ancient times, was found in the north. The word must be used here in a figurative sense, an instance of which is given in Zechariah 4:12, where the word gold is used for “pure oil.” Such figurative use of gold for splendour of light is common in Oriental literature: “The sun is gold” says Abulala. God is now approaching, as Elihu himself feels, for he again breaks forth, “With (literally, upon) God is terrible majesty.” A golden sheen fills the northern sky as the awful Eloah draws near. The uplifting of the clouds indicated in the preceding verse prepares us for the irruption of divine glory.

Samuel Wesley, in his learned dissertations on Job, may not have been far out of the way in his view that this splendour was that of the Aurora Borealis, lifting itself above the storm. Wemyss indorses this view, while Tayler Lewis remarks, “that it was something that combined the beautiful, as we may judge from the name he gives it, with the terrible. That there was something of this fearful fascination about it is evident from the sudden cry which it calls out: With God is dreadful majesty.” The interpretation of Hirtzel and Delitzsch is a constrained one, to wit, that man may lay bare the hidden treasures of gold, but cannot search out God, nor comprehend the depths of his wisdom and power.