Job 38:8

Or [who] shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, [as if] it had issued out of the womb?

Ver. 8. Or who shut up the sea with doors] i.e. With bounds and banks. The sea God shut up in the hollow parts of the earth, as in a great house, that the dry land, naturally overwhelmed thereby, might appear, and become fit, both to bear grain, grass, plants, &c., and to yield a habitation for men and beasts. Piscator thinks it is a metaphor from flood gates at mill ponds.

When it brake forth as if it had issued out of the womb?] The sea is here set forth in lively colours, as an imcomprehensible work of God's wisdom. Out of nothing God produced it at first, as an infant out of the mother's womb. How great is God, then, to whom the great sea is but as a little infant? It brake out of the womb, when it was severed from the abyss; which lay covered with darkness, till the waters below were separated from those above, Genesis 1:10 .