The Insight
The verse describes a place where layers of darkness stack upon each other, waves above waves, clouds above those, until a person cannot see their own hand in front of them. This is not a description of a stormy night at sea. Every detail is specific: layered darkness, multiple types of waves, total visual absence. Modern oceanography has mapped exactly this: sunlight does not penetrate beyond approximately 200 metres of ocean depth. Below that threshold is a permanent, total darkness that no 7th-century human had ever directly witnessed. The deep ocean is inaccessible without modern submarines; the first humans to experience it did so in the 20th century. The verse also mentions two types of waves, surface waves and, beneath them, internal waves. Deep-sea oceanographers in the 20th century discovered internal waves: enormous waves that travel along density boundaries hundreds of metres below the surface, completely invisible from above. Layered darkness. Waves upon waves. Hands you cannot see. The verse describes a place no one had been.