Job 26
Introduction
Job 26 is one of the most magnificent passages in the book — a two-part response to Bildad's brief and dismissive speech in chapter 25. It opens with three verses of scathing sarcasm, then pivots without warning into a sustained hymn of cosmic theology that leaves Bildad's thin doxology far behind. The structure is itself the argument: You think you described God's greatness? Let me show you what that actually looks like.
The sarcasm of vv. 2–4 is precisely aimed. Bildad had said humanity is powerless before God, a maggot and worm. Job mirrors the language back: "What a great help you've been to the powerless!" The implied target could be Job himself (the one without strength), but more pointedly it may be directed at Bildad's own failure — his speech helped no one, illuminated nothing, came from no divine source. The question "Whose spirit spoke through you?" carries a particular sting: in wisdom literature, true counsel comes from the Spirit of God; Bildad's words came from nowhere. Then from v. 5 onward, Job takes up the very theme of divine transcendence that Bildad invoked and develops it into something vast and mythologically rich: the trembling shades, the naked underworld, the earth hung on nothing, the horizon drawn at the boundary of light and dark, the crushing of Rahab and the fleeing serpent. And then — the devastating final stroke of v. 14: all of this is just the fringe of God's ways, a whisper of a word. The thunder of his power, no one can understand.
Biting Sarcasm (vv. 2–4)
2 "How you have helped the powerless and saved the arm that is feeble! 3 How you have counseled the unwise and provided fully sound insight! 4 To whom have you uttered these words? And whose spirit spoke through you?
2 "What help you have given to the powerless, what deliverance to the arm that has no strength! 3 What counsel you have offered to one without wisdom, what abundant sound wisdom you have revealed! 4 To whom have you spoken these words? And whose breath has gone out through you?
Notes
The opening lines are pure sarcasm — the exclamatory מַה, "what/how") followed by praise that rings hollow. "The powerless" (לְלֹא כֹחַ), "for the one without strength") is almost certainly an ironic self-reference: Job is the one stripped of all strength. Bildad's speech about human worthlessness was supposed to humble Job, but Job hears it as useless noise.
The word תּוּשִׁיָּה in v. 3 is a key wisdom term meaning "practical wisdom, sound insight, that which is effective." It appears in Job 11:6 (Zophar's claim that God holds back some of his wisdom from Job) and Job 12:16 (Job using it of God's own wisdom). Here Job mimics the friends' vocabulary — Oh, how much sound wisdom you have revealed! — to expose its emptiness.
The final question of v. 4 — "Whose breath has gone out through you?" — is the sharpest thrust. נִשְׁמַת מִי — "the breath/spirit of whom?" — uses the word נְשָׁמָה, the breath of life that God breathed into Adam (Genesis 2:7). True prophetic and wisdom speech carries divine breath; Bildad's words, Job implies, carry no such authority. The source of Bildad's theology is not God — it is tradition repeated without understanding.
The Realm of the Dead Lies Open (vv. 5–6)
5 The dead tremble— those beneath the waters and those who dwell in them. 6 Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering.
5 The shades tremble below — the waters and their inhabitants. 6 Sheol is bare before him, and Abaddon has no covering.
Notes
Job's hymn begins not with the heavens but with the depths — a deliberate inversion that emphasizes how complete God's sovereignty is. הָרְפָאִים — "the shades, the dead" — are the spirits of the departed who inhabit the underworld. The word רָפָא (rapha) here is distinct from the word for "heal"; this רְפָאִים refers to the hollow, powerless shadows of the dead (as in Isaiah 14:9, Proverbs 2:18). Even they tremble at God's presence.
שְׁאוֹל is the Hebrew name for the underworld — the realm of all the dead, a place of shadows and silence. It is "naked" (עָרוֹם) before God — not merely visible, but stripped of all concealment, fully exposed. The parallel term אֲבַדּוֹן, from the root אָבַד (abad, "to perish/destroy"), names the deepest pit of destruction within Sheol — the place of utter ruin. In Revelation 9:11 it becomes the name of the angel of the abyss. No covering, no hiding, no darkness deep enough to escape God's gaze.
Hanging the Earth on Nothing (vv. 7–10)
7 He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth upon nothing. 8 He wraps up the waters in His clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their own weight. 9 He covers the face of the full moon, spreading over it His cloud. 10 He has inscribed a horizon on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.
7 He stretches out the north over the void, he suspends the earth over nothingness. 8 He binds up the waters in his clouds, and the cloud does not split open beneath them. 9 He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his cloud over it. 10 He drew a circle on the face of the waters, at the boundary between light and darkness.
Notes
Verse 7 contains two of the most cosmologically remarkable lines in the Hebrew Bible. The first: נֹטֶה צָפוֹן עַל תֹּהוּ — "he stretches out the north over chaos/void." תֹּהוּ is the word from Genesis 1:2: "the earth was formless and void" (תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ). The heavenly north — the canopy of the sky — is stretched like a tent over the primordial chaos, holding it in check.
The second: תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ עַל בְּלִי מָה — "he hangs the earth upon not-anything." בְּלִי מָה is literally "upon nothing" — a phrase of stunning precision. In the ancient Near East, cosmologies typically imagined the earth resting on pillars, on ocean, on the back of a great animal. Job's cosmology here is different: the earth is suspended over absolute nothingness. The Hebrew term anticipates what modern science would confirm centuries later.
In v. 10, the verb חָג is from the root חוּג, "to draw a circle, to inscribe a boundary." It is the same root used in Isaiah 40:22 — "he who sits above the circle (חוּג) of the earth." Here God draws the horizon — חֹק חָג עַל פְּנֵי מָיִם, "he inscribed a circle on the face of the waters" — the line at the boundary between light and darkness, order and chaos. This horizon is not just a geographical feature; it is the dividing line God established at creation between the light and the deep.
Rahab and the Fleeing Serpent (vv. 11–13)
11 The foundations of heaven quake, astounded at His rebuke. 12 By His power He stirred the sea; by His understanding He shattered Rahab. 13 By His breath the skies were cleared; His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.
11 The pillars of heaven shudder, struck with awe at his rebuke. 12 By his power he stilled the sea; by his understanding he shattered Rahab. 13 By his breath the skies became clear; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.
Notes
These verses draw on the ancient combat mythology known as Chaoskampf — the battle between the creator god and the forces of primordial chaos, often personified as a sea-monster. This was a widespread mythological tradition in the ancient Near East (the Babylonian Enuma Elish features the god Marduk defeating the sea-dragon Tiamat). The Hebrew Bible does not adopt this mythology wholesale, but it uses its imagery poetically to describe God's creative sovereignty.
רָהַב is the name of this cosmic sea-monster in Hebrew poetry — distinct from Rahab the woman of Jericho. It appears also in Psalm 89:10 ("you crushed Rahab like a carcass"), Isaiah 51:9 ("was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces?"), and elsewhere. The verb מָחַץ — "shattered, crushed" — is the word for a decisive, violent blow.
In v. 13, נָחָשׁ בָּרִיחַ — "the fleeing serpent" or "the twisting/swift serpent" — is the same phrase used in Isaiah 27:1: "In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent." This is Leviathan under another name — the chaos-serpent that God pierced at creation. The word בָּרִיחַ can mean "fugitive, fleeing" or "twisting, bar-like" — both images of the writhing sea-monster.
The verb in v. 12 — רָגַע — is genuinely ambiguous. It can mean "to stir, to disturb" or "to calm, to still." The BSB footnote acknowledges this. In the context of the Chaoskampf imagery, "stilled" fits better: God subdued the sea, brought the primordial chaos under his sovereign control.
The Fringe of His Ways (v. 14)
14 Indeed, these are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?
14 And these are only the edges of his ways — how faint a whisper is all we hear of him! But the thunder of his power — who can understand it?
Notes
The closing verse transforms the entire preceding hymn. Everything Job has described — the shades trembling, Sheol exposed, the earth hung on nothing, the horizon inscribed, Rahab shattered, the serpent pierced — is only the קְצוֹת דְּרָכָיו, "the edges/fringes/extremities of his ways." Not the heart of God's action, but the outer hem of his garment.
שֵׁמֶץ דָּבָר — "a whisper of a word, a mere hint of speech" — is a stunning image for the limits of human theological knowledge. שֵׁמֶץ appears only twice in the OT (Job 4:12 and here) and means a barely audible sound, a fragment. All of our talk about God — all of Bildad's speech, all of Job's own hymn — is a faint echo of the true thunder.
רַעַם גְּבוּרוֹתָיו — "the thunder of his mighty acts" — who can understand it? The word רַעַם is the word for thunder, which in Hebrew poetry is sometimes called "the voice of God" (see Psalm 29). Job ends where Bildad could not reach: having demolished Bildad's thin cosmology with a vastly richer one, he then acknowledges that even this more magnificent picture barely scratches the surface. The effect is to deepen the mystery rather than resolve it — and to set up the voice from the whirlwind in chapters 38–41, where God will ask Job exactly these questions in return.