Job's Reply to Bildad
You Have Really Been Helpful
26 Job said:
2 You have really been helpful
to someone weak and weary.
3 You have given great advice
and wonderful wisdom
to someone truly in need.
4 How can anyone possibly speak
with such understanding?
5 Remember the terrible trembling
of those in the world of the dead
below the mighty ocean.
6 Nothing in that land
of death and destruction
is hidden from God,
7 who hung the northern sky
and suspended the earth
on empty space.
8 God stores water in clouds,
but they don't burst,
9 and he wraps them around
the face of the moon.
10 On the surface of the ocean,
God has drawn a boundary line
between light and darkness.
11 And columns supporting the sky
tremble at his command.
12 By his power and wisdom,
God conquered the force
of the mighty ocean.[a]
13 The heavens became bright
when he breathed,
and the escaping sea monster[b]
died at his hands.
14 These things are merely a whisper
of God's power at work.
How little we would understand
if this whisper
ever turned into thunder!
Footnotes
- 26.12 the force of the mighty ocean: The Hebrew text has “the ocean … Rahab.” In this passage the sea monster Rahab stands for the fearsome power of the ocean (see the notes at 3.8 and 9.13).
- 26.13 sea monster: The Hebrew text has “snake,” which probably stands for some kind of fearsome sea monster, such as Leviathan (see Isaiah 27.1).