Job 26:3-13

3 How you have enlightened my stupidity! What wise advice you have offered!

4 Where have you gotten all these wise sayings? Whose spirit speaks through you?

5 “The dead tremble— those who live beneath the waters.

6 The underworld is naked in God’s presence. The place of destruction is uncovered.

7 God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.

8 He wraps the rain in his thick clouds, and the clouds don’t burst with the weight.

9 He covers the face of the moon, shrouding it with his clouds.

10 He created the horizon when he separated the waters; he set the boundary between day and night.

11 The foundations of heaven tremble; they shudder at his rebuke.

12 By his power the sea grew calm. By his skill he crushed the great sea monster.

13 His Spirit made the heavens beautiful, and his power pierced the gliding serpent.

Job 26:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 26

In this chapter Job, in a very sarcastic manner, rallies Bildad on the weakness and impertinence of his reply, and sets it in a very ridiculous light; showing it to be quite foolish and stupid, and not at all to the purpose, and besides was none of his own, but what he had borrowed from another, Job 26:1-4; and if it was of any avail in the controversy to speak of the greatness and majesty of God, of his perfections and attributes, of his ways and works, he could say greater and more glorious things of God than he had done, and as he does, Job 26:5-13; beginning at the lower parts of the creation, and gradually ascending to the superior and celestial ones; and concludes with observing, that, after all, it was but little that was known of God and his ways, by himself, by Bildad, or by any mortal creature, Job 26:14.

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew Sheol.
• [b]. Hebrew Abaddon.
• [c]. Or covers his throne.
• [d]. Hebrew Rahab, the name of a mythical sea monster that represents chaos in ancient literature.