Job 38:8-10 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Who shut up the sea with doors? Who was it that set bounds to the vast and raging ocean, and shut it up, as it were, with doors within its proper place, that it might not overflow the earth? When it brake forth, &c. From the womb or bowels of the earth, within which the waters were for the most part contained, and out of which they were by God's command brought forth into the channel which God had appointed for them. When I made the cloud the garment thereof When I covered it with vapours and clouds which rise out of the sea, and hover above it, and cover it like a garment. And thick darkness Black and dark clouds; a swaddling-band for it Having compared the sea to a new-born infant, he continues the metaphor, and makes the clouds as swaddling-bands, to keep it within its bounds; though indeed neither clouds, nor air, nor sands, nor shores, can bound the sea, but God alone. And brake up for it my decreed place Made those hollow places in the earth, which might serve for a cradle to receive and hold this great and goodly infant when it came out of the womb. And set bars and doors Fixed its bounds as strongly as if they were fortified with bars and doors.