There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen:
The verse stands in the long dispute between Job and his three friends over his afflictions, a dispute running from chapters 4 to 31, and chapter 28 is Job's praise of wisdom as he turns away from his friends' accusations to contemplate God. In its immediate sense it describes man's hidden mining paths cut through rock to find iron and copper and silver and gold while holding back streams, paths no fowl knows and no vulture's eye has seen. The chapter asks where wisdom can be found, teaching that the way to wisdom is hidden from the sight and knowledge of living creatures, even those with keen vision, and is beyond reach of ordinary discovery by searching the earth as people search for precious metals.
It sets man's skill in finding metals against his inability to find the place of wisdom on his own, for wisdom is not found in the sea and cannot be gotten for gold, and no wealth of the world can equal it. God understands the way of wisdom and brings it within reach of man, so that wisdom is found in God and his children learn it by walking in the fear of him, for the fear of the Lord is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding, which even simple people can nevertheless find. As a path to hidden treasure unknown even to birds of keen sight, the verse shows that finding the Bible's hidden riches requires more than a superficial reading and calls for searching deeply and following each subject through the Scriptures.
The path unknown to birds of prey and unseen by their keen eyes pictures the clear, safe way to Mount Zion, the highway for the Lord's redeemed and the King's highway for the Christian walk, which no predatory creature has trodden and on which those who walk do not stumble or fall. Walking that King's highway as a Bible Christian equipped to resist the adversary and overcome requires wholehearted love for God and fervent love for his children, obedience to the Ten Commandments including the holy Sabbath, baptism into Christ's death followed by a new life and fellowship in God's church, and faithful reliance on Jesus for the crown of life through the Lamb's merits. The verse means the bright holy highway that leads to Zion's hill, cast above the dark death-damps of earth and above its noise, strife, perils, pain and pestilential breath, where no vulture's eye has seen, no lion's whelp has walked, no worldly foot has pressed, and no ravenous beast, serpent, or unclean bird shall find that Eden. None but God's ransomed and redeemed ones shall tread its holy soil, inhaling life and strength from the mount where immortality flows.
Whoever walks that highway, however weak, frail, faint, lame, deaf, sick or blind, glows with strength and vigor, with the lame leaping, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, and the stammering tongue loosed to sing God's praises through eternal life, basking beside the cooling fount and eating fruit from life's healing tree whose leaves relieve all maladies and restore health and immortality, coming singing unto Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads. The verse reveals the celestial beings who bear the righteous upward at the second coming of Christ as the morning stars and the sons of God, on whose wings the righteous are lifted amid the destruction of all earthly things to rise and be forever with the Lord. The path unseen by the vulture's red eye is now made as a highway of communication deep down along old ocean's slimy bed far beyond human ken, where the ocean belted with magnetic wire affords a railway for the lightning's fire by which men send dispatches abroad on the electric flash and head back lawbreakers fleeing justice.
The verse stands in the long dispute between Job and his three friends over his afflictions, a dispute running from chapters 4 to 31, and chapter 28 is Job's praise of wisdom as he turns away from his friends' accusations to contemplate God. In its immediate sense it describes man's hidden mining paths cut through rock to find iron and copper and silver and gold while holding back streams, paths no fowl knows and no vulture's eye has seen. The chapter asks where wisdom can be found, teaching that the way to wisdom is hidden from the sight and knowledge of living creatures, even those with keen vision, and is beyond reach of ordinary discovery by searching the earth as people search for precious metals.
It sets man's skill in finding metals against his inability to find the place of wisdom on his own, for wisdom is not found in the sea and cannot be gotten for gold, and no wealth of the world can equal it. God understands the way of wisdom and brings it within reach of man, so that wisdom is found in God and his children learn it by walking in the fear of him, for the fear of the Lord is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding, which even simple people can nevertheless find. As a path to hidden treasure unknown even to birds of keen sight, the verse shows that finding the Bible's hidden riches requires more than a superficial reading and calls for searching deeply and following each subject through the Scriptures.
The path unknown to birds of prey and unseen by their keen eyes pictures the clear, safe way to Mount Zion, the highway for the Lord's redeemed and the King's highway for the Christian walk, which no predatory creature has trodden and on which those who walk do not stumble or fall. Walking that King's highway as a Bible Christian equipped to resist the adversary and overcome requires wholehearted love for God and fervent love for his children, obedience to the Ten Commandments including the holy Sabbath, baptism into Christ's death followed by a new life and fellowship in God's church, and faithful reliance on Jesus for the crown of life through the Lamb's merits. The verse means the bright holy highway that leads to Zion's hill, cast above the dark death-damps of earth and above its noise, strife, perils, pain and pestilential breath, where no vulture's eye has seen, no lion's whelp has walked, no worldly foot has pressed, and no ravenous beast, serpent, or unclean bird shall find that Eden. None but God's ransomed and redeemed ones shall tread its holy soil, inhaling life and strength from the mount where immortality flows.
Whoever walks that highway, however weak, frail, faint, lame, deaf, sick or blind, glows with strength and vigor, with the lame leaping, the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, and the stammering tongue loosed to sing God's praises through eternal life, basking beside the cooling fount and eating fruit from life's healing tree whose leaves relieve all maladies and restore health and immortality, coming singing unto Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads. The verse reveals the celestial beings who bear the righteous upward at the second coming of Christ as the morning stars and the sons of God, on whose wings the righteous are lifted amid the destruction of all earthly things to rise and be forever with the Lord. The path unseen by the vulture's red eye is now made as a highway of communication deep down along old ocean's slimy bed far beyond human ken, where the ocean belted with magnetic wire affords a railway for the lightning's fire by which men send dispatches abroad on the electric flash and head back lawbreakers fleeing justice.