Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields:
Ver. 10. Who giveth rain upon the earth] This is reckoned, and rightly, among the marvellous works of God. See Job 28:26 Jeremiah 10:13 Amo 5:8 Acts 14:17. Rain is the flux of a moist cloud, which being dissolved by little and little by the heat of the sun, lets down rain by drops out of the middle region of the air: this is God's gift. For Hebrews 1:1,14. Decreeth it, Job 28:26 Job 28:2. .Prepareth it, Psalms 147:8 Psalms 147:3. Withholdeth it at his pleasure, stopping those bottles that should yield it, Amos 4:7 Amos 4:4. Sendeth it for the behoof and benefit of man and beast, as also for the demonstration of his power, wisdom, justice, and goodness, whereof he hath not left himself hereby without witness, Acts 14:17, while he weigheth these waters above the firmament by measure, so that not one drop falleth in vain, or in a wrong place. In those hot countries, where rivers were scant, rain was highly valued; they called it the husband of the earth, because the earth can no more bear fruit without it than a woman children without the company of a man. The Egyptians were wont in mockery to tell the Greeks that if their god (whom they called cloud gathering Jupiter, νεφεληγερετα Zευς) should forget to give rain they might chance to starve for it. See the reason, Deuteronomy 11:8,12. Egypt was watered with the foot as a garden, by sluices from the Nile: not so Canaan.
He sendeth waters upon the fields] Irrigat aquis universa, saith the Vulgate, He moisteneth all places with waters; by the showers which, falling upon the grouud, run hither and thither, he divideth the fields, as it were, into streets and highways, so Beza paraphraseth. Another thus, It is he himself who watereth it, as well by those waters which fall from heaven as by those which he hath hidden in its entrails, and whose secret drains produce in a thousand places sources and rivers. Some render it, upon the out places, and understand it as wilderness, to set forth God's bounty. Others render it, upon the face of the streets, and will have it meant of navigable rivers, which, by the passage upon them, do, after a sort, make streets and highway ways through several countries, to the which also they convey many commodities.