Job 37:1-24

Job 37:5. God thundereth marvellously with his voice. See on Psalms 29. This chapter is divided from the former, in the midst of a sublime description of a storm.

Job 37:22. The golden splendour cometh out of the north. Aurora borealis, the streamers or northern lights. They shine with the same splendour in the south as in the north, and must be regarded as a gracious provision of the Creator to cheer the cold dark nights of the arctic regions. In Hudson's bay, in Iceland, and Siberia, they are far more brilliant than in England. The coruscations rise and dart in various figures. Sometimes in a sheet of horizontal radiance like the morning rays; sometimes in pale but well- defined beams; at other times in gentle flashes, and with a slight hissing noise. These flashes often gently succeed one another; sometimes the iris, or rainbow, is seen in these configurations of refracted light. The electric fluid, no doubt, occasions these phenomena, but probably combined with refractions of light from the ice and icebergs of the northern regions. They are neither seen nor needed at the equator.