Job 26

Job 26 stands near the end of the third cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends. In Job 25, Bildad briefly argues that no human being can be righteous before God, and in this chapter Job responds. Job's discourse continues in Job 27 and beyond.

Outline

• Verses 1–4: Job answers Bildad. He sarcastically asks, "How hast thou helped him that is without power?" and asks to whom Bildad has uttered words and whose spirit came from him.
• Verses 5–6: Even the spirits of the dead beneath the great waters tremble before God, and neither Sheol nor the place of destruction is hidden from Him.
• Verses 7–10: God stretches out the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth upon nothing, and He binds up the waters in the clouds. He covers the face of His throne with clouds and draws a boundary between light and darkness on the face of the waters.
• Verses 11–13: When God rebukes, the pillars of heaven tremble. By His power He stirs up the sea and strikes down Rahab; by His spirit He adorns the heavens, and He pierces the fleeing serpent (KJV "crooked serpent").
• Verse 14: All of this is merely the "outskirts" (that is, the fringes) of God's works. What humans have heard is but a faint whisper; no one can comprehend the thunder of His mighty power.

Key Verses

• Job 26:7, "and hangeth the earth upon nothing": A well-known verse describing the power of the Creator.
• Job 26:14, "Lo, these are parts of his ways": A verse confessing the limits of human knowledge of God.

People and Places

• Job: The speaker in this chapter.
• Bildad: One of Job's three friends. He is the "thou" addressed in verses 2–4.
• Rahab: The name of a being that symbolizes the sea or chaos. This figure is distinct from Rahab, the woman of Jericho.
• Place of destruction: A rendering of the Hebrew Abaddon, which is paired with Sheol to denote the realm of death.

Interpretive Considerations

• The question of the speaker: The traditional reading and most translations attribute the entire chapter to Job. However, Bildad's third speech is very short, and Zophar has no third speech at all. For this reason, some scholars suggest that portions of verses 5–14 originally belonged to Bildad or Zophar.
• Rahab and the fleeing serpent: Rahab also appears in Psalm 89:10 and Isaiah 51:9, and Isaiah 27:1 identifies the "fleeing serpent" as Leviathan. Many interpreters regard these expressions as poetic language that borrows from ancient Near Eastern chaos myths to proclaim God's sovereignty.
• Interpreting 26:7: Some read this verse as anticipating the fact that the earth is suspended in space. Others hold that it is an ancient poetic expression celebrating God's power and should not be read as a scientific statement (see creation and evolution).
• Connection to the New Testament: In Revelation 9:11, the angel of the bottomless pit is named Abaddon.

In the Korean Church

Job 26:7 is frequently cited in sermons on the relationship between the Bible and science and in lectures on creationist apologetics.