Who determined its measures, if you know? Or who stretched the line on it?
Parallel translations
- KJV Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
- BSB Who fixed its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched a measuring line across 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, 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?
- Job 11:9Its measure is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.
- Zech 2:1–2I lifted up my eyes, and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand.
- Job 28:25He establishes the force of the wind. Yes, he measures out the waters by measure.
- Ps 78:55He also drove out the nations before them, allotted them for an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
- Isa 34:11But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.
- 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;
- Prov 8:27When he established the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle on the surface of the deep,
- 2 Cor 10:16so as to preach the Good News even to the parts beyond you, not to boast in what someone else has already done.
- Ps 19:4Their voice has gone out through all the earth, their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun,
- Prov 8:29when he gave to the sea its boundary, that the waters should not violate his commandment, 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.