He binds up the waters in his thick clouds: binds up translates a verb meaning to “close in, put in a container, wrap up.” The picture is of God wrapping up water in the clouds in such a way that the clouds do not split under the weight of the water. Proverbs 30.4 says “Who has ever … wrapped up water in a piece of cloth?” (Good News Translation). Psalm 33.7 has a similar thought: “He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle.” Waters refers to “rain water” more than to water generally. This line may be rendered, for example, “He wraps up the rain in his clouds,” “He uses the clouds to bag up the rain,” or “He fills the clouds with rain water.”

And the cloud is not rent under them: in Hebrew cloud is singular in this line but expresses the same plural image as in the first line. Rent translates the verb used in Genesis 7.11, in which the rain came in the Noah story: “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth….” In 38.37 the clouds are called the “waterskins of the heavens,” comparing them with sacks made of animal skins, for containing water. The poet pictures them as being so firm they are not “burst, broken, split, torn” by the weight of the rain water in them. In languages in which an active construction must be used, we may translate, for example, “and the rain does not burst the cloud” or “the rain water does not tear the cloud.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, Wiliam. A Handbook on Job. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .