Job 26
Job 26 is Job's answer to Bildad's six-verse collapse. The dialogue cycle is breaking down. The friends have run out of material. Job opens with four verses of devastating sarcasm - how hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength? how hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? (26:2-3). The questions are rhetorical and the answer is the chapter's implied verdict: not at all. Bildad has helped nothing, saved no arm, counselled no wisdom. The six verses he managed in chapter 25 were the sound of his framework finally running out of breath.
And then, in vv. 5-13, Job does something startling. He launches into a meditation on God's cosmic majesty so vast and so precise that it makes the friends' whole theological project look small. Sheol is naked before him, and Abaddon has no covering (26:6). He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing (26:7). He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them (26:8). He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end (26:10). The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof (26:11). He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud (26:12). By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent (26:13). The chapter is the canon's most concentrated demonstration that the sufferer on the ash heap often knows the doctrine of God better than the comfortable theologians lecturing him.
The chapter closes in a doxology of acknowledged limitation. Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand? (26:14). Job ends his speech not by claiming to have mastered God, but by naming that what he has just described is only the outer edge of God's actual being. The verse will eventually be answered by Hebrews 1:1-2: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. The portions the prophets heard in fragments are finally spoken in full in Christ. Job ended his theology by admitting what little had been heard; the New Testament begins with the announcement that the full word has finally been spoken.
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Job 26:1-4The Empty Help of Bildad
1But Job answered and said, 2How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength? 3How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? and how hast thou plentifully declared the thing as it is? 4To whom hast thou uttered words? and whose spirit came from thee?
Job's four-verse opening is some of the most concentrated sarcasm in the wisdom literature1. The structure is a rhetorical four-question barrage. How hast thou helped him that is without power? How savest thou the arm that hath no strength? How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? How hast thou plentifully declared the thing as it is? The implied answer to all four questions is the same: not at all. Bildad's six-verse speech has delivered no help, saved no arm, counseled no wisdom, and declared no truth. The chapter is teaching, with surgical sarcasm, what bad counsel actually is from the receiving end: the absence of help, dressed in the appearance of help.
Verse 4's closing question is the chapter's sharpest. To whom hast thou uttered words? and whose spirit came from thee? Job is asking: whose Spirit was animating your speech? The implied answer is: not God's. The friends have been claiming to speak for God throughout the dialogue (cf. Eliphaz's mystical vision in Job 4:12-17 and Bildad's appeal to tradition in Job 8:8-10). Job is challenging the claim. The chapter is asking whether the spirit driving the friends' counsel is actually the Spirit of God - or just the spirit of their own assumptions, projected upward and labeled divine. The challenge is, in a way, the same challenge 1 John 4:1 will eventually make of every spirit in the church: beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God.
Job 26:5-10He Hangeth the Earth Upon Nothing
5Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof. 6Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. 7He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. 8He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them. 9He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it. 10He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.
Verses 8-10 build on the picture of God's sustaining power. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them. A cloud, in the ancient world's physics, was simply water suspended in air - and the question of why the water did not immediately fall as rain was a real one. The chapter is answering: God Himself holds the waters in suspension; the cloud does not tear under the weight because His power holds it. He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end (v. 10) - the same theology of the sea-boundary the LORD will deliver in His own voice in Job 38:8-11 (who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb… and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed). Job's cosmic theology in chapter 26 is so accurate that the LORD will essentially restate it in chapter 38, only with personal authority. Job already knows what the LORD is going to say. He just does not yet know God is going to say it directly.
Job 26:11-14The Pillars, the Serpent, and the Portion
11The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof. 12He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud. 13By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent. 14Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?
Verse 11's image is one of the chapter's most striking. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof. The ancient cosmology pictured the sky as a dome supported by pillars at the edge of the earth (Job 9:6 uses similar imagery). The chapter is saying that even the cosmic supports of the universe shake at the sound of God's voice. The same dynamic appears in Sinai (Ex. 19:18 - the whole mount quaked greatly), in Isaiah's temple vision (Isa. 6:4 - the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried), and finally in the New Testament: whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven (Heb. 12:26). The chapter is naming a feature of God's power that the New Testament will eventually identify as the eschatological shaking. The pillars trembled when Christ spoke at Sinai. They will tremble again when He returns.
Further study
- Hebrew text with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Job's cosmic doxology - including the rabbinic discussion of the unique Hebrew expression al-belimah (“upon nothing”) in v. 7, a hapax legomenon found nowhere else in Scripture.
- Job 26:7 ↔ Colossians 1:16-17Intertextual BiblePaul's declaration that by him all things consist (Col 1:17) finally names the unseen hand by which Job 26:7 says the earth hangs upon nothing.
- Job 26:14 ↔ Hebrews 1:1-2Intertextual BibleJob's closing line - “how little a portion is heard of him?” - is the question Hebrews 1:1-2 finally answers: the portions heard by the prophets are now spoken in full in the Son.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Empty Help of Bildad
- 2 Corinthians 12:9My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.The gospel answer to the question Bildad failed to answer.
- Hebrews 4:15-16Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.The kind of help Bildad could not give and Christ can.
He Hangeth the Earth Upon Nothing
- Colossians 1:16-17By him were all things created… and by him all things consist.The Person named by the New Testament as the answer to Job 26:7’s <em>al-belimah</em>.
- Hebrews 1:3Upholding all things by the word of his power.The mechanism of the hanging.
- Job 38:8-11Who shut up the sea with doors… and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.The LORD’s own voice in chapter 38 restating the theology Job preaches here in chapter 26.
The Pillars, the Serpent, and the Portion
- Isaiah 27:1In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent.The same <em>nachash bariach</em> Job 26:13 names - promised to be slain by the LORD.
- Romans 16:20And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.The crushing of the serpent Job’s hand-formed-the-serpent verse already anticipates.
- Hebrews 1:1-2God… hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.The answer to “how little a portion is heard of him?” - the full speech of God in Christ.
- John 14:9He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.The thunder of God’s power, finally with a face.