A35538:1159
An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second,…
An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second, being the five last, chapters of the book of Job being the substance of fifty-two lectures or meditations / by Joseph Caryl ...
London: printed by M. and S. Simmons, 1666
Title page typeset from the transcription.
AN EXPOSITION WITH Practical Observations UPON The Thirty-eighth, T… › Chapter 38 › Verse 34-38
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
I (saith the Lord Amos 4.7.) have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one City, and caused it not to rain upon another City; one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not, ⟨p. 276⟩withered. One months drought before harvest threatens a scarcity or dearth of Corn; but two, yea, three months drought, must needs usher in a dreadful famine.
I (saith the Lord Amos 4.7.) have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one City, and caused it not to rain upon another City; one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not, ⟨p. 276⟩withered. One months drought before harvest threatens a scarsity or dearth of Corn; but two, yea, three months drought, must needs usher in a dreadful famine.
1The second interpretation of these words seems yet more clear, Who can stay the bottles of heaven, when the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together? that is, who but God can stop rain when there is no farther need of rain? As it the Lo•d had said, When the bottles of heaven have given out so much rain as may sit the earth for fruit-bearing, or when the ground hath had its fill, so that the light dust is turned into lumps of earth, and that dust which was raised and tossed with every breath of wi•d, is clodded and agglutinated by water into a massive substance; when, I say, 'tis thus with the earth, who can stay or stop the bottles of heaven, from raining more, to the sp•il of all, but my self? So then the true use of rain is held forth in this 38. vers. namely, that the dust of the earth being moistened with rain, may coalesce or be joined close together. This, I conceive, is the most natural and proper sense of the Text. For the earth, which by drought was crumbled into dust, rain falling plentifully upon it, is knit again into one body, like meal or flower into which leaven is put, and so is made ready to receive,