Job 26
Butler1. THEN Job answered and said,
2. How hast thou helped him that is without power!
How hast thou saved the arm that hath no strength!
3. How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom,
And plentifully declared sound knowledge!
4. To whom hast thou uttered words?
And whose spirit came forth from thee?
5. They that are deceased tremble
Beneath the waters and the inhabitants thereof.
6. Sheol is naked before him,
And Abaddon hath no covering.
7. He stretcheth out the north over empty space, And hangeth the earth upon nothing.
8. He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; And the cloud is not rent under them.
9. He closeth in the face of his throne, And spreadeth his cloud upon it.
10. He hath described a boundary upon the face of the waters,
Unto the confines of light and darkness.
11. The pillars of heaven tremble
And are astonished at his rebuke.
12. He stirreth up the sea with his power,
And by his understanding he smiteth through Rahab.
13. By his spirit the heavens are garnished; His hand hath pierced the swift serpent. 14 Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways:
WITH this chapter begins the magnificent series of discourses in which Job reviews and sums up the whole controversy. He adopts all that is substantially true in the arguments of his opponents, and recedes from a position which, though tenable against them, does not accord with his own principles, or truly represent the results of his own experience. After a few words of well-deserved, but not bitter rebuke (vs. 1-4), he enlarges upon the first great truth which has been often stated, but neither on their side nor on his without some admixture of error or of rebellious feeling, the truth of God’s almightiness and omniscience; and concludes a description, crowded with sublime imagery, by a declaration that all that can be conceived or received by man is but a faint echo of the voice which, if uttered, would overwhelm the spirit of man. Cook.
Bildad had spoken only of God’s kingdom in heaven; Job adds the counterpart, His kingdom in Hades, the world of death. Thence he ascends to the creation, the origin and foundation of Divine dominion; and finisheth with a display of some illustrious operations of Providence for the benefit and preservation of our system. He shows them that he firmly believed in the all-wise and almighty Maker and Governor of the world; and had too great and venerating ideas of His adorable perfections to be capable of being an atheist, as Eliphaz had cruelly painted him (22: 12-20), or of entering into a contest with such a formidable Being, as Bildad had injuriously represented Him. Scott.
Bildad in his short speech magnified the greatness of God and His purity, before which even the heavens are not clean. Job had heard all this before; it did not touch the enigma of his life and of Providence. Hence, first, he pours out his sarcasm on Bildad’s irrelevant statements (vs. 2-4). He knows God’s greatness not less than Bildad, if knowledge of it only helped him in any way or had any bearing on the dispute, which was not concerning the greatness of God, but concerning His justice. And second, to show that he does not need to be taught concerning God’s greatness, he proceeds to give a far more brilliant picture of it than Bildad had attempted, showing how it manifests itself; in the underworld of the shades (vs. 5, 6); in the world above, the earth and heavens (vs. 7-13); ending with the sublime thought that, mighty and majestic as the oper-
And how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?
ations of God are which are seen in these parts of the universe, they are but the fringes or outskirts of His ways, only a whisper in comparison to the full thunder of His power.
2-4. Job sarcastically expresses his admiration of Bildad’s speech, and gratitude for the help it has been to him. A. B. D.—What powerful support hast Thou given to one (Job himself) who is deprived of all strength and wisdom? Rosenmüller.—Dost Thou think me ignorant of these things, or canst Thou pretend to any extraordinary inspiration concerning them? Bishop Patrick.
5. They that are deceased tremble. This rendering scarcely does justice to the original, though it is better than the Authorized Version, which is wholly without intelligible meaning. Other and more adequate versions are: The shades are put to pain (Delitzsch); Where groan the giant shades (T. Lewis); There the shades are made to sorely tremble (Ewald); The shades tremble (Conant). The word rephso, feebly rendered “dead things,” means the shades of the dead; the departed spirits that dwell in Sheol. (See Isa. 14: 9.) These, because the place of Sheol was conceived to be under the earth, are designated those beneath the waters. Curry.—Bildad had spoken of God’s dominion in heaven, Job shows that it reaches the dead; the Hebrew word is Rephaim, the name of an extinct race of giants, but here and elsewhere applied to the shades (souls) of the departed. The dead sleep; their shadowy forms rest in Sheol, under the ocean; but God’s will reaches them, rouses them in torture from their death-stillness below the depths of ocean peopled by monster forms. This statement coincides with many vague allusions to the conditions of the disembodied spirit, and it has a most fitting place in Job’s discourse. His (God’s) witness is on high, but His power reaches to the very abodes of darkness, and restores consciousness to the very shades of the departed.
6. Abaddon, the abyss of the bottomless pit; the abode of destruction; no mere abstraction or negation, but a region impenetrable save to God’s eye.
7. The north. By the north we are probably to understand the firmament, extending, as the ancient Semites conceived, from the northern point indicated by the polar star, over the apparently empty space of our atmosphere. The words employed here and in other passages of Holy Scripture do not convey the impression of substance or of metallic solidity, as is frequently asserted, but simply of expansion; they are vague, indefinite, just what they ought to be to express the impressions made upon an observant mind, careful not to substitute speculations for facts. Cook.
The word north here denotes the heavens as they appear to revolve around the pole, and which seem to be stretched out as a curtain. The heavens are often represented as a veil, an expanse, a curtain, or a tent. (See Isa. 34:4; 40:22.) Upon nothing. That is, without anything to support it. There is no certain evidence here that there then existed any conception of the globular form of the earth, with its diurnal and annual revolutions. But it is clear that it is regarded as not resting on any foundation or support; as lying on the vacant air, and kept there by the power of God. Barnes.—In respect to the real “foundations of the earth,” the Bible holds a truer language than science itself. The ultimate foundations, or supports, of the earth are God’s upholding power. T. L.
Empty space. Sir John Herschel has been sounding the heavens with his powerful telescope, and gauging the stars, and where do you think he finds the most barren part—the empty place—of the sky? In the north, precisely where Job told Bildad, the Shuhite, the empty place was stretched out. It is there where comets most delight to roam, and hide themselves in emptiness. Maury.—How Job knew the truth, demonstrated by astronomy, that the earth hangs self-poised in empty space, is a question not easily solved by those who deny the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Cook.
8. He bindeth up the waters in His thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them. Sir Isaac Newton could not have more succinctly stated the position of the earth, nor could any of our meteorologists give fitter outline of our cloud system than this and similar descriptions embody. W. Fraser.—He binds up the waters and keeps them suspended in the clouds; through which they distil by drops to moisten the earth in due season. Bishop Patrick.—This verse comprehends the whole process of Almighty power in making the air, raising the watery vapors, condensing them into clouds, and sustaining them in that form so that their contents may not burst all at once upon the earth. Scott.—Notwithstanding the vast weight of water so raised and laid up, yet the cloud is not rent under them, for then they would burst and pour out as a spout; but they distil through the cloud and so come drop by drop, in mercy to the earth, in small or great rain, as He pleases. H.
9. The deep vault of the heavens is referred to as God’s throne, which is spoken of as being closed in—veiled—by the cloud. Curry.—It is a beautiful poetical conception that the firmament not only reflects the splendor of God, but also veils His throne from human eyes. All nature may be regarded as a veil of Deity, “through whose mantling folds” he designs to show so much of His being as eye or heart can bear. J. S. Burr.—Heaven, or the sky, is styled in Scripture “the throne of God;” which “He shutteth up,” by spreading His clouds upon it. We are here presented with the same scene of nature which is described in chap. 36:32, “With clouds He covereth the light, and commandeth it not to shine, by the cloud that cometh betwixt.” This is the magnificent preparation and signal of Providence for the descent of fruitful showers on the thirsty ground. Psalm 147:8, “Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.” Cloud-assembling Jove is one of the lofty titles which Homer gives to the Supreme Being. Scott.
10. He hath described a boundary. The thought is carried over to the waters of the sea, which, according to the universal conception of antiquity, encircled the whole earth, and whose outer rim reached to the confines of light and darkness, where the two abutted upon each other. Curry.
11. The pillars of heaven tremble. When God shows Himself angry by sending thunder, tempests, and earthquakes, the very heavens seem to tremble, and the whole universe to be moved by these tokens of His displeasure. Clark.—The figurative expression, “the pillars of heaven,” seems intended to represent the heavens, under the idea of an immense fabric, supported on stately columns. Their “trembling” and “astonishment” is the animated style of sublime poetry, to denote violent concussions of the air, and agitation of the clouds. The cause is God’s “reproof”—that is, thunder, lightning, and tempestuous winds, which are represented by the heathen, as well as by sacred poets, as effects and tokens of God’s displeasure at the sins of men. Scott.
12. It may be the description of a tempest; and if the former part mean that God sometimes, by His power, raises a violent storm at sea, the latter may be well enough understood of the pride or swelling of the sea itself, allayed again by the same Divine power and will that raised it. Peters.
13. For aught that appears, all space is populous with worlds; for aught that appears, there never has been, and never will be, a moment without the presence in it of created worlds. The uncreated and indestructible amphitheatre of duration in which the stars run their courses, and the absence of which is inconceivable, is equally august and infinite with that of space, and equally unintelligible. They are twin mysteries—great cloudy homes, within whose coincident and sublime architectures dwell all other mysteries, all created nature, and even the Supernatural. E. F. Burr.
“The serpent” may mean an heavenly constellation, called the great dragon or serpent; which being most eminent as taking up a considerable part of the northern hemisphere, may well be put for all the rest of the constellations or stars with which the heavens are garnished. Job knew the names of certain constellations, as appears from chaps. 9:9 and 38:31. Poole.
14. The power of God is illustrated in the mighty works described in vs. 5-13. Yet what we see of Him in these is but the ends, the outskirts of His real operations. And what we hear of Him is but as a faint whisper; the thunder of the full unfolding of His power who can understand? The nervous brevity and sublimity of these words are unsurpassable. A. B. D.
These are only “parts of His ways.” These nether regions of disembodied spirits, this great earth suspended “on nothing,” the oceans of waters that roll around and over its surface, the heavens crowded with innumerable globes of fiery brilliancy—He has to do with them all. He is not like the engineer that has finished the machine and left it, or the architect that has built the edifice and left it. He is in every part of the machinery He has constructed, in every part of the great house He has built. D. Thomas.—Every star must give up its secret before we have the complete manifestation of God, and even then we would see but “parts of His ways.” To compare and to study these may be, must be, the work of eternity; and, as we wonder sometimes how a soul, growing on forever, can find fresh exercise for all its thoughts and activities, we may reach the answer when we look up through the countless hosts of the firmament, and feel that every point of light shall yet open out into a sun, and each one cast its own special illumination on the nature of Him who, with all our searching, cannot be found out unto perfection. Ker.
His power. Though in a just idea of the Deity perhaps none of His attributes are predominant, yet to our imagination His power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparison, is necessary to satisfy us of His wisdom, His justice, and His goodness. To be struck with His power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. And although a consideration of His other attributes may relieve in some measure our apprehensions, yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling; and even while we are receiving benefits we cannot but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance. Burke.
It is the object of the sacred writer, in this chapter, to show the power and grandeur of God as seen in His works. The structure of the material universe and the processes of nature are represented as they appear to the eye, and by the impressions which they make on the common mind. So these subjects are everywhere treated in the Bible; and the lessons thus given require no other knowledge of nature than what is apparent to every eye. Any other mode would not have answered the design of the Holy Scriptures, the religious and moral instruction of men in every stage of culture and knowledge. By this exhibition of the power and sovereignty of God, in nature and over all created intelligences, the way is prepared for the topics of the next two chapters. Conant.