Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across it?
Parallel translations
- WEB Who determined its measures, if you know? Or who stretched the line on it?
- KJV Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
- NKJV Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
- NASB Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the measuring line over it?
- NLT Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line?
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
Who measured the earth and stretched the surveyor's line across it? Certainly not Job. Creation was God's design alone.
Overview
Using the imagery of an architect or builder, God asks who set the earth's dimensions. The question implies meticulous, intentional design rather than accident. It reminds Job that the ordered world he lives in flows from a wisdom infinitely beyond his own.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Isa 40:12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or marked off the heavens with the span of his hand? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on a scale and the hills with a balance?
- Job 11:9Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea.
- Zech 2:1–2Then I lifted up my eyes and saw a man with a measuring line in his hand.
- Job 28:25When God fixed the weight of the wind and measured out the waters,
- Ps 78:55He drove out nations before them and apportioned their inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their tents.
- Isa 34:11The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will dwell in it. The LORD will stretch out over Edom a measuring line of chaos and a plumb line of destruction.
- Isa 40:22He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; its dwellers are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
- Prov 8:27I was there when He established the heavens, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep,
- 2 Cor 10:16so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. Then we will not be boasting in the work already done in another man’s territory.
- Ps 19:4their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun.
- Prov 8:29when He set a boundary for the sea, so that the waters would not surpass His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
Resources, by level
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 38:5 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.