Some questions from an ancient writer - in the Book of  Job, Old Testament circa 6th century BC

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? 

Who stretched a measuring line across it? 

Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place?

Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place? Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? 

Have the gates of death been shown to you?  

Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? 

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?  

What is the way to the abode of light?  Where does darkness reside? 

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? 

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? 

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father?  

Who fathers the drops of dew? 

From whose womb comes the ice?  

Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?

Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?  

Can you loosen Orion’s belt? 

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? 

Do you know the laws of the heavens?  Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? 

Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding? 

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?  Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?

Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? 

Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Job 38