Job Replies: God’s Majesty Is Unsearchable
1 Job, reproving the uncharitable spirit of Bildad, 5 acknowledged the power of God to be infinite and unsearchable.
Job 26:1 Then Job replied:
Now begins the long discourse of Job, which ends with ch. 31 . In this speech Job, after hastily brushing aside Bildad’s last speech, proceeds to explain his viewpoints. He sets forth, first, the might and majesty of God (ch. 26:5–14). Then he deals with the questions that concern his own integrity and God’s dealings with mankind. The former he still maintains. Regarding the latter, he admits that retribution comes upon the wicked at last (ch. 27).
In ch. 28, after paying a deserved tribute to man’s intelligence and ingenuity about earthly things, he pronounces the spiritual world and the principles of the divine government to be inscrutable to him, and his only true wisdom to be right conduct. Finally, he returns to his own case, and having given a description of his former, prosperous life (ch. 29) contrasted with his present, forlorn life (ch. 30), he concludes with an avowal of his integrity in all the various duties and obligations of life (ch. 31).
Job 26:2 “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm that is feeble!
Verses 2–4 contain a series of questions intended to reveal the weak logic of Bildad’s speech. This is Job’s longest sustained address to one individual. Job usually addressed all three together in the second person plural. Bildad had told Job nothing that he did not already know. What good was accomplished by reminding him that he was a worm and wholly unclean?
Job 26:3 What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what great insight you have displayed!
Probably an ironical comment on the thought of Bildad’s brief speech. If Job were to admit lack of wisdom, what had Bildad done to supply that lack? The thing as it is. Or “sound knowledge,” “sound counsel.”
Job 26:4 Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?
What is the source of your authority? Surely there is no evidence of divine inspiration. Did Eliphaz prompt you (see ch. 4:17–19)?
Job 26:5 “The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them.
Bildad has emphasized the sovereignty of God in the heavens. Job is adding that God’s power extends to the dwellers in she’ol (see v. 6).
Job 26:6 The realm of the dead is naked before God; Destruction lies uncovered.
Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
Job turns from God’s power as manifested in death and destruction to God’s power as manifested in creation. The northern heavens contained the more important constellations mentioned in the book of Job. In this text Job recognizes that these heavenly bodies are upheld by divine power (see Job 9:8; Ps. 104:2; Isa. 40:22; Isa. 44:24; Zech. 12:1).
The words translated “spreads out” is frequently used of pitching a tent (Gen. 12:8; 26:25; 33:19; 35:21; Judges 4:11). The heavens are conceived of as being pitched like a tent, only they have no supporting tent poles.
Suspends the earth over nothing. Heb. tohu, the word translated “without form” in Gen. 1:2. Rather than visualize the earth as resting on pillars, as did some of the ancients, Job worshiped a God whose power he conceived of as supporting the earth.
Job 26:8 He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
The metaphor is probably drawn from the waterskins, so well-known in the East, and especially in Arabia, in which water was stored. These skins were likely to be “rent,” or torn, by the weight of the liquid. Yet the clouds could carry vast amounts of water without such mishaps (see Job 38:37; Prov. 30:4).
Job 26:9 He covers the face of His throne, And spreads His cloud over it.
The significance of this statement may be that God conceals Himself from man’s physical senses. God sees fit to maintain His communion with man on a spiritual rather than on a sensuous level. Although clouds may hide His throne from sight (see 1 Kings 8:12; Ps. 18:11; 97:2), His throne exists, and will be eventually seen by the redeemed (Rev. 22:1–4).
Job 26:10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.
“Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure; And said, ‘Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O world!’” —MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book VII.
Job 26:11 The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke.
This seems to be a figure of the mountains on the horizon on which the sky was thought of as resting.
Job 26:12 By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.
Job 26:13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent.
At a breath from God, that is by a wind that He sends, the heavens, lately all cloud and storm, recover their serenity. Both the storm and the calm are pictured as coming from God.
Gliding serpent. Job may have had in mind the war in heaven when Satan, that “old serpent,” was expelled from heaven (Rev. 12:7–9; cf. Rom. 16:20).
Job 26:14 And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”
Job has endeavored to portray God as the great creator and sustainer of the universe. His method has been to illustrate the power of God by referring to natural phenomena. But after he has done his best, he exclaims, “These are but the outer fringe of My works.”
“Whisper.” What we know of God is merely a faint whisper.
Thunder. In contrast with the whisper, Job compares the actual power of God to thunder. He implies that he has enumerated only a small fraction of God’s great works. He could hardly have chosen nobler language to express his deep feelings regarding the way the divine glory surpasses human knowledge.