Job: He Hangs the Earth on Nothing
1 Then Job answered, 2 “How have you helped him who is without power! How have you saved the arm that has no strength! 3 How have you counseled him who has no wisdom, and plentifully declared sound knowledge! 4 To whom have you uttered words? Whose spirit came out of you? 5 “The departed spirits tremble, those beneath the waters and all that live in them. 6 Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering. 7 He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing. 8 He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not burst under them. 9 He encloses the face of his throne, and spreads his cloud on it. 10 He has described a boundary on the surface of the waters, and to the confines of light and darkness. 11 The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his rebuke. 12 He stirs up the sea with his power, and by his understanding he strikes through Rahab. 13 By his Spirit the heavens are garnished. His hand has pierced the swift serpent. 14 Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. How small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?”
Job answers a speech about God's greatness with a better one, and ends by calling all of it the edge of a whisper.
The sarcasm is the finest in the book because it is delivered as praise. How have you helped him who is without power! How have you saved the arm that has no strength! Job 26:2.
Bildad had said nothing that helped, and Job congratulates him for it in the language of a compliment. Then the real question: to whom have you uttered words? Whose spirit came out of you? Job 26:4 — who was that speech for, and where did it come from? Eliphaz had claimed a spirit as his source Job 4:15. Job asks the friends to name theirs.
He then answers Bildad's hymn with a longer and better one, which is the point of the chapter. If the argument is about who can describe God's greatness most impressively, Job wins it without effort.
The reach of it goes down first. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering Job 26:6 — the place of the dead is not a region outside his jurisdiction. Job has been talking about the grave for twenty chapters as somewhere he will go and be forgotten; here he says it is uncovered before God, which is what makes his hope in chapter 14 coherent.
Then upward and outward. He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing Job 26:7.
That line has no parallel in the ancient world's descriptions of the earth, which rest it on something. Job says it rests on nothing at all, suspended over emptiness. He is not doing science; he is describing a support that is not physical, and the observation is exact.
The waters are bound in his thick clouds, and the cloud does not burst under the weight Job 26:8 — an accurate description of an ordinary and impossible-looking thing. A boundary is drawn on the face of the waters to the confines of light and darkness Job 26:10, which is the horizon.
And the last verse is what makes the chapter more than a display. Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways. How small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand? Job 26:14.
Everything he has just said — the hanging earth, the bound waters, the naked grave — is the outer edge, and what reaches human ears is a whisper. The thunder is unheard.
That is Job conceding the friends' premise more completely than they held it themselves, and it changes nothing about his case. A man can know God is beyond understanding and still be owed an answer to a specific question.
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