Commentary on Job, part 11

Stepanos relates Job's claim that God commanded the sun not rise to the darkening of the earth and the failure of the sun's light at Christ's death on the cross (Luke 23:44-45). So according to Stepanos, Job's words are anticipations of Christ's crucifixion rather than a reference to an event in the relative past (as, for example, Isho'dad of Merv's conjecture that the passage refers to the plague of darkness of Exodus 10:21).

"...who commands the sun and it does not rise; [who seals up the stars.]" (9:7)

He made the earth quake [cf. Matthew 27:50-51) by crying out on the Cross and commending his spirit, and sealed them up so that from now on the souls are in the hands of God. Until the fulfillment of the Mystery there was a presumption of fear among the angels concerning the fall of the adversary. Having sealed them up, he released their presumption of fear at the time of the Cross, and as a leaf on a vine is shaken the luminaries requested that it not be by the stretching out of the arm of the almighty power that he sealed them up. And the one who did this is the same as he who in the beginning established all things.