1. On this view, prayer has no instrumental purpose, for Nature will always decide.

2. The Peripatetic (Aristotelian) school with whom Malbim identifies Bildad.

3. The relevant part of the quotation is:
As for any other signification the stars may have in relation to other things which have no connection with their elemental qualities, as for example in the determination of poverty or wealth, or whether a given person will marry one wife or more than one, or whether he will be virtuous or vicious - this school denies any such power. It is false, they say, and extremely unlikely that the stars should give indications of things which have nothing to do with them, like poverty, wealth love, hate, etc.

4. 'According to the nature of the elements the earth should be covered with the element water...' (Sefer Ha-Ikarrim, Book 4. Chapter 8). Albo is referring to the Aristotelian idea that earth has its natural place at the center of the universe and water, being the next heaviest element, has its natural place immediately above (I. Husik, 1930).

5. In his commentary on Genesis 1 Malbim adopts the view of Nahmanides that creation (ex nihilo) took place only at the first moment: 'In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth.' Malbim identifies this 'first creation' with the act of creation described by the Kabbalists as involving the 'contraction' (צמצום) of the Divinity.
According to Malbim, the Heaven (שמים) of this 'first creation' is the Cosmos to whose governance Job attributes his misfortunes. No further changes were to be made to this Cosmos by God after its creation; God granted it an autonomy and its governance is therefore independent of Him. During the next six days, only the primeval Earth was affected by God's fiats. Everything it was to comprise had been created at that seminal moment, whether actually or potentially, but was not positioned or expressed until the six days of the creation of the sublunar world. This process required that God make changes in the Earth of the 'first creation'; the Earth was not given autonomy but was subject to God's will, and still is.
For example, Malbim explains the firmament (רקיע) that separates between the waters on the earth and those in the atmosphere, as being associated with the new property of evaporation - the law of the force of expansion - with which, on the second day, God endowed the primeval waters that had enveloped the earth after 'first creation'. Similarly, waters were used by God to punish Noah's wicked contemporaries, proving that God can, when He wants, use the earthly elements to exercise His Governance.
We might add that though this might have been the case before the Flood, afterwards God promised: 'While the earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall never cease (Genesis 8:22).' This covenant restricts the agencies available for His Governance of the sublunar world. No mention of this is made in Job. But as we have noted elsewhere Job stands alone amongst the books of the Tnach, as though its protagonists and narrator had no knowledge of the other books or of their contents.

6. Elements such as Flood and Tempest, that are subject to special natural laws and not to the rule of the Cosmos.

7. In his commentary to Psalms 36, Malbim explains God's Governance as being exercised under two headings. The first is the Natural Governance ordered by the fixed unchanging laws of Nature, such as the cycles of day and night, summer and winter etc.; this Governance, which is designated 'faithfulness' - אמונה in Scripture, is set in Heaven - בשמים - and operates according to fixed laws laid down from its inception. The second is a non-uniform miraculous Governance by which God overrides Nature when required, such as at the crossing of the Red Sea; this Governance is designated 'mercy' - חסד, and is set in the Vault of Heaven - בשחקים.
This gives rise to the mistaken view that man's actions, good or evil, do not directly affect the physical world. That only God Himself can affect the workings of Nature; that only through His intervention is mankind rewarded or punished in this world, Nature itself being indifferent to a person's observance of God's ordinances. On this view, reward and punishment are miracles and when God chooses not to intervene, the wicked may prosper and the good suffer, whichever way Nature prescribes at the time.
However, continues Malbim, the Torah teaches otherwise. There is a resonance between the deeds of man and Nature; good deeds bring good things and evil deeds bring bad ones: 'If you follow My statutes... I will give you rain at the right time...' (Leviticus 26:2ff). The Creator, in his infinite wisdom, linked the microcosm of man with the macrocosm of Nature, such that the laws of the latter follow on from the volitional acts of the former; Nature's strings resonating to the music made by man. [Malbim acknowledges taking this imagery from Akedat Yitzchak by Isaac Arama].
But there is a difference between the two types of requital. Conspicuous miracles, such as the splitting of the Red Sea, are brought about by God's direct intervention: this is designated 'charity' - צדקה. However, the hidden miracles such as rainfall at the right time occur through Nature, as an inherent reaction to man's conduct: this is designated 'law' - משפט. Individual Providence is hidden because were we to receive immediate tangible returns for our deeds we would be no more than trained animals responding to the whip or to lumps of sugar; free-will would be meaningless; man would be just another animal.
That the exercise of our intellect can make us act against the dictates of our natural animal instincts demonstrates how man's deeds can affect the physical world. For all the natural laws scattered throughout Creation are contained in man's body; he has within him the entire macrocosm of Nature. Thus, when his human thinking soul determines the laws of the microcosm and places it under its rule, it also subdues the macrocosm, for the two are but a single concern.

8. 1 Kings 3:28. This is the term used to describe Solomon's wisdom.

1. Malbim makes repeated reference in all his commentaries to what he calls the 'law of expansion - חוק ההתפשטות', by whose invocation the original nature of the element water to blanket the element earth was altered. As he writes: At the beginning of Creation, planet Earth was completely covered by water, for it is the nature of the element water to envelope the element earth just as the element air envelopes the element water. And God altered this nature and decreed that the water should be gathered to one place. The universal law that God ordained to change the nature of the water is the force of expansion that He established in the air. For initially, the element air was mixed with the element water and it was by virtue of the law of the force of expansion in the air that vapors were separated from the water by the light created on the first day. They rose upwards forming the firmament: the atmosphere, the mists and the clouds... And this law has no link with the Cosmos, for it was invoked after the first Creation.

1. Malbim asserts that the ancients considered the far north to be uninhabited i. e., that 'the lower part of the sphere which is covered by the waters of the Ocean they called 'north', and there the earth remained in chaos (תהו) and covered by water as it was at the beginning of creation.'

2. Malbim regards the word 'בלימה' as being derived from the root בלם - to restrain. He explains that the statute referred to in verse 10 is the natural law by whose injunction God restrained the primeval waters on the second and third days of Creation producing the blue sky and clouds, and making possible the appearance of dry-land, rivers and seas.