Job 38:14

14. It is turned as clay to the seal It is changed like signet-clay. The earth, which beneath the veil of night appeared an obscure and disfigured mass, takes the impress of the rising light, and reveals forms of beauty and lineaments of design, just as the uncouth clay receives and retains the stamp of the seal. In other words, the dark earth no sooner feels the touch of the morning light the seal the Almighty holds in his hand than it responds by a disclosure of a widespread landscape in all its diversified form and hue. The figure is one of exquisite beauty. Many of the Assyrian seals, according to Layard, ( Nineveh, etc., vol. 2:421; 3:608,) were most delicately and minutely ornamented with various sacred devices. They were often cylindrical, and turned on an axis. “They were evidently rolled on the moist clay at the same time as the characters were impressed. The tablet was then placed in the furnace and baked.” Some suppose that there is a reference here to the revolution of the earth around its axis. See note of Hitzig, in loc.

As a garment The objects thus revealed stand forth like the variegated embroidery of a garment. The ancient Egyptians, according to Eusebius, portrayed the world after the form of a man clad in a variegated garment reaching down to the feet.