Where is the way to the home of light? Do you know where darkness resides,
Parallel translations
- WEB “What is the way to the dwelling of light? As for darkness, where is its place,
- KJV Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof,
- NKJV “Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And darkness, where is its place,
- NASB ¶“Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And darkness, where is its place,
- NLT “Where does light come from, and where does darkness go?
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
God asks where light dwells and where darkness has its home. Job cannot locate the origins of the most basic realities.
Overview
The LORD inquires about the very dwelling places of light and darkness, treating them almost as living things with appointed homes. Job has no answer. The poetry underscores how the most familiar phenomena remain deep mysteries known only to their Creator.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Ezek 32:8All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you, and I will bring darkness upon your land,’ declares the Lord GOD.
- Deut 4:19When you look to the heavens and see the sun and moon and stars—all the host of heaven—do not be enticed to bow down and worship what the LORD your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.
- Ps 105:28He sent darkness, and it became dark—yet they defied His words.
- Ps 18:11He made darkness His hiding place, and storm clouds a canopy around Him.
- Matt 27:45From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.
- Job 38:12–13In your days, have you commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,
- Amos 4:13For behold, He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind and reveals His thoughts to man, who turns the dawn to darkness and strides on the heights of the earth—the LORD, the God of Hosts, is His name.”
- Isa 45:7I form the light and create the darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity. I, the LORD, do all these things.
- Gen 1:14–18And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to distinguish between the day and the night, and let them be signs to mark the seasons and days and years.
- Gen 1:3–4And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
- Ps 104:20You bring darkness, and it becomes night, when all the beasts of the forest prowl.
- John 1:9The true Light who gives light to every man was coming into the world.
- John 8:12Once again, Jesus spoke to the people and said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.”
- Jer 13:16Give glory to the LORD your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.
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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 38:19 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.