“Can you, with Him, spread out the skies, Strong as a cast metal mirror?
Parallel translations
- WEB Can you, with him, spread out the sky, which is strong as a cast metal mirror?
- KJV Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?
- BSB can you, like Him, spread out the skies to reflect the heat like a mirror of bronze?
- NKJV With Him, have you spread out the skies, Strong as a cast metal mirror?
- NLT he makes the skies reflect the heat like a bronze mirror. Can you do that?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Job is challenged whether he can spread out the sky as God does, firm as a polished bronze mirror. He plainly cannot.
Overview
Elihu compares the vault of heaven to a hard, cast-metal mirror, stable and enduring. The question exposes the absurdity of a creature claiming to share in such creative power. This anticipates God's opening challenge in 38:4 about who laid the earth's foundations.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Isa 44:24Yahweh, your Redeemer, and he who formed you from the womb says: “I am Yahweh, who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself;
- Ps 104:2He covers himself with light as with a garment. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain.
- Isa 40:22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in;
- Exod 38:8He made the basin of brass, and its base of brass, out of the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered at the door of the Tent of Meeting.
- Gen 1:6–8God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
- Ps 148:4–6Praise him, you heavens of heavens, You waters that are above the heavens.
- Job 9:8–9He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
- Isa 40:12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the sky with his span, and calculated the dust of the earth in a measuring basket, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?
- Prov 8:27When he established the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle on the surface of the deep,
- Ps 150:1Praise Yah! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his heavens for his acts of power!
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 37:18 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.