unaccented ah, and as Isa 19:18 ‛Ir ha-Heres is a play upon החרס עיר, Ἡλιούπολις), perhaps from the same root as חרוּץ, one of the poetical names of gold. At His command the sun rises not, and He seals up the stars, i.e., conceals them behind thick clouds, so that the day becomes dark, and the night is not made bright. One may with Schultens think of the Flood, or with Warburton of the Egyptian darkness, and the standing still of the sun at the word of Joshua; but these are only single historical instances of a fact here affirmed as a universal experience of the divine power.
Verses 8-10
Job 9:8-10 8 Who alone spreadeth out the heavens,
And walketh upon the heights of the sea; 9 Who made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,
And the chambers of the south; 10 Who doeth great things past finding out,
And wondrous things without number.
Ewald, Hirzel, and others, understand נטה (Job 9:8) according to Psa 18:10 : He letteth down the clouds of heaven, and walketh on the heights of the sea of clouds, i.e., high above the towering thunder-clouds. But parallel passages, such as Isa 40:22; Psa 104:2, and especially Isa 44:24, show that Job 9:8 is to be understood as referring to the creation of the firmament of heaven; and consequently נטה is to be taken in the sense of expandere, and is a form of expression naturally occurring in connection with the mention of the waters which are separated by means of the רקיע. The question arises, whether ים here means the sea of waters above the firmament or upon the earth. According to the idea of the ancients, the waters which descend as rain have their habitation far away in the infinite expanse of the sky; the ocean of the sky (Egyptian Nun-pa), through which the sun-god Ra sails every day, is there. It is possible that ”the heights of the sea” here, and perhaps also “the roots of the sea” (Job 36:30),
