Job’s reply
26
But Job answered and said,2 📚“How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the feeble arm!
Job’s determination
3 📚What counsel you have given to one without wisdom! What abundant advice you have made known!
4 📚To whom have you spoken these words? And whose spirit came speaking through you?
26:1-4 In very sarcastic language Job pours scorn on Bildad. It is plain to him that Bildad is totally incapable of helping him understand anything of God’s ways. If we talk long enough people will find out what we are.⚜
5 📚“The dead tremble, those under the waters, and all that live in them.
6 📚Hell 📖 is naked before him, and destruction 📖 has no covering.
7 📚He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing.
26:7 Here he gives the picture of the earth hanging in space with no support. This may have been the common idea of educated men of Job’s time and place. Or it could be evidence of a revelation God had once given to mankind not recorded any place else in the Bible, or it might be a truth God had revealed directly to Job.⚜
8 📚He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, but the cloud is not torn under the weight of them.
9 📚He covers the face of his throne 📖, and spreads his cloud over it.
10 📚He draws a circle on the surface of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness.
11 📚At his rebuke the pillars of the heavens tremble, and are appalled.
12 📚He divided the sea by his power, and by his understanding struck down the proud 📖.
13 📚By his Spirit the heavens became bright. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.
26:5-13 Bildad has brought up the theme of God’s greatness as though Job knew nothing about it. Job enlarges on the same subject and far surpasses Bildad (and the other two friends) in his eloquent descriptions of God’s power. Bildad spoke of God’s sovereignty in heaven. Job says he knows God’s sovereignty extends even to the lowest regions of the universe – to the dead, to destruction, to Sheol (compare Isa 14:9-15).⚜
14 📚See, these are but the edges of his ways; and how faint a whisper we hear of him! Then who can understand the thunder of his power?”
26:14 Job says God’s works speak of Him. Compare Ps 19:1-4. But what men hear is only like a whisper. God’s power is so great that His works which are known to us, wonderful as they are, can indicate only a tiny part of it. No one can begin to understand His omnipotence. Job obviously had very high views of the greatness of God. It is not because he is ignorant of it that he says God has unjustly sent calamities on him.⚜