Psalmi 38:8

Clementine Latin Vulgate

Quis conclusit ostiis mare, quando erumpebat quasi de vulva procedens ;

Parallel Translations

Jerome's Latin Vulgate (405)
Quis conclusit ostiis mare,
quando erumpebat quasi de vulva procedens;

Nova Vulgata (1979)
Quis conclusit ostiis mare, quando erumpebat quasi de visceribus procedens,

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

who: Job 38:10, Genesis 1:9, Psalms 33:7, Psalms 104:9, Proverbs 8:29, Jeremiah 5:22

out: Job 38:29

Reciprocal: Genesis 7:11 - all Exodus 14:29 - walked 1 Kings 17:4 - I have commanded Job 11:10 - shut up Job 26:10 - compassed Job 36:30 - and Job 38:28 - Hath the Psalms 24:2 - and Psalms 29:10 - sitteth Psalms 65:7 - noise Psalms 89:9 - General Psalms 107:24 - his wonders Psalms 146:6 - the sea Proverbs 3:20 - the depths Matthew 8:26 - and rebuked Luke 8:25 - being

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Or [who] shut up the sea with doors,.... From the earth the transition is to the sea, according to the order of the creation; and this refers not to the state and case of the sea as at the flood, of which some interpret it, but as at its first creation; and it is throughout this account represented as an infant, and here first as in embryo, shut up in the bowels of the earth, where it was when first created with it, as an infant shut up in its mother's womb, and with the doors of it; see Job 3:10; the bowels of the earth being the storehouses where God first laid up the deep waters, Psalms 33:7; and when the chaos, the misshapen earth, was like a woman big with child;

when it brake forth out of the abyss, as the Targum, with force and violence, as Pharez broke out of his mother's womb; for which reason he had his name given, which signifies a breach, Genesis 38:29; so it follows,

[as if] it had issued out of the womb; as a child out of its mother's womb; so the sea burst forth and issued out of the bowels of the earth, and covered it all around, as in Psalms 104:6; and now it was that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, before they were drained off the earth; this was the first open visible production of the sea, and nay be called the birth of it; see Genesis 1:2. Something like this the Heathen philosopher Archelaus had a notion of, who says g, the sea was shut up in hollow places, and was as it were strained through the earth.

g Laert. Vit. Philosoph. l. 2. p. 99.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Or who shut up the sea with doors - This refers also to the act of the creation, and to the fact that God fixed limits to the raging of the ocean. The word “doors” is used here rather to denote gates, such as are made to shut up water in a dam. The Hebrew word properly refers, in the dual form which is used here דלתים delethiym), to “double doors,” or to folding doors, and is also applied to the gates of a city; Deuteronomy 3:5; 1 Samuel 23:7; Isaiah 45:1. The idea is, that the floods were bursting forth from the abyss or the center of the earth, and were checked by placing gates or doors which restrained them. Whether this is designed to be a poetic or a real description of what took place at the creation, it is not easy to determine. Nothing forbids the idea that something like this may have occurred when the waters in the earth were pouring forth tumultuously, and when they were restrained by obstructions placed there by the hand of God, as if he had made gates through which they could pass only when he should open them. This supposition also would accord well with the account of the flood in Genesis 7:11, where it is said that “the fountains of the great deep were broken up,” as if those flood-gates had been opened, or the obstructions which God had placed there had been suffered to be broken through, and the waters of their own accord flowed over the world. We know as yet too little of the interior of the earth, to ascertain whether this is to be understood as a literal description of what actually occurred.

When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb - All the images here are taken from child-birth. The ocean is represented as being born, and then as invested with clouds and darkness as its covering and its swaddling-bands. The image is a bold one, and I do not know that it is any where else applied to the formation of the ocean.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Job 38:8. Who shut up the sea with doors — Who gathered the waters together into one place, and fixed the sea its limits, so that it cannot overpass them to inundate the earth?

When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? — This is a very fine metaphor. The sea is represented as a newly born infant issuing from the womb of the void and formless chaos; and the delicate circumstance of the liquor amnii, which bursts out previously to the birth of the foetus, alluded to. The allusion to the birth of a child is carried on in the next verse.