Bildad returns to Job’s claim (4:12–21) to have received esoteric knowledge about the deity’s conduct of the world and, more specifically, his attitude toward humankind. As Bildad explains, God’s control of creation prompts both awe and dread. Job is therefore in no position to comprehend God’s ways. The segments of this discourse have somehow been copied out of order in the received Hebrew text. The proper sequence is reconstructed with the aid of such clues as singular address (necessarily to Job), introduction to a quotation (26:4), a paraphrase of Job (25:4–6), and thematic associations (see the introduction to this volume).
[25:1] Up spoke Bildad the Shuhite and he said:
[26:2–3] How do you offer help without power?1
How do you save with an arm lacking strength?
How do you give counsel without wisdom,
Imparting so much sage knowledge?
[26:4] Whose words are you revealing?
Whose breath comes forth from you:2
[25:4–6] “How can a mortal be righteous before El?3
How can a man born of woman be innocent4?
If the moon cannot shine brightly5 enough,
And the stars are not pure in his eyes,6
Then all the less a mortal, a maggot;
(All the less) a son of a human, a worm!”7
[25:2–3] Dominion and dread are his.
He makes peace in his heights.
Is there a number to his celestial troops?8
On whom does his daylight9 not rise?
[26:5–6] The shades of the dead writhe
Under the sea and its dwellers.10
Sheol is naked before him,
Abaddon11 has no garment to cover it.
[7–8] He stretches Mount Zaphon12 o’er the Chaos,13
He suspends the earth over nothing at all.
He bundles up water in his clouds,14
And none bursts under its weight.
[9–10] He encloses15 the face16 of the new moon,17
He spreads18 over it his clouds.19
He draws a border round the face of the water,20
At the limit where light meets darkness.
[11] The pillars supporting the sky shudder,21
Stunned by the blast of his rebuke.22
[12–13] Using his power he aroused and stilled23 the sea,
And using his skill he smote Rahab;24
Using his wind he put Yamm25 in his net;26
His hand pierced the Elusive27 Serpent.
[14] Now these are only the outskirts28 of his ways.29
Yet what hint of a word do we hear of them?30
Who can apprehend his mighty thunder?31
1. The singular address must belong to a companion, not to Job, who addresses his companions in the plural.
2. An introduction to direct discourse, in this case a parody of the words of the spirit, quoted by Job in 4:17–19. Eliphaz had done the same in 15:14–16.
3. Compare Job 4:17; 15:14.
4. Literally, “be pure, clean.” Compare Job 15:14.
5. The aleph only indicates a vowel; the form is a Hiph‘il of h-l-l.
6. Compare Job 15:15.
7. Compare Job 4:19, where the human is merely one born in dust, not a worm.
8. A figure for the stars; see Judges 5:20; Isaiah 40:26.
9. An ironic contrast to the “daylight,” which is night, to which the murderer “rises” in Job 24:14; compare 38:15.
10. The netherworld (see the next line) is located here beneath the sea. Compare Isaiah 26:19, where the “shades” “dwell” in the dust.
11. The realm of oblivion, another name for the netherworld; see also Job 28:22.
12. The Mount Olympus of Canaanite mythology; see Psalm 48:3, where Jerusalem, seat of Israel’s God, is identified with the seat of the Canaanite pantheon. The verb “stretch” is conventionally used of the sky (as in Job 9:8), but it is the land, not the sky, that is set over the watery chaos, and the context here makes a reference to land fairly clear.
13. The watery chaos of Genesis 1:2.
14. Compare Proverbs 30:4.
15. Compare later Aramaic usage in the sense of “to shut.”
16. The surface; compare the surface of the water in the following couplet.
17. Reading keseh with no change in spelling; see Psalm 81:4. Ancient translations and most moderns read “throne,” but that word is properly spelled ks’ (not ksh), and the sense of “throne” is inapt in context; compare the image in Job 9:7. Traditional commentators interpret “throne” figuratively as the heavens, the throne of the deity.
18. The well-known Hebrew verb paras (compare Psalm 105:39) has a superfluous z at the end. Perhaps a stray letter, like a w from a spelling pwrs, was mistakenly inserted here; or there is contamination from the z at the end of m’ḥz in the preceding line.
19. Compare Job 9:7.
20. An act from the time of creation; see Proverbs 8:27.
21. An Aramaism; the verb r-p-p translates the “trembling” of the “pillars” in the Aramaic translation to Job 9:6.
22. The noun “rebuke” is used of the deity’s primordial suppression of the sea and issues from a “blast of his nostrils”; see Psalm 18:16.
23. The verb is artfully ambiguous. Contrast raga‘ in Isaiah 51:15 and Jeremiah 31:34 (“arouse”) with heraga‘ in Jeremiah 47:6 (“be stilled”).
24. An Israelite name for the primeval sea monster; see Job 9:13.
25. The Canaanite sea god and sea monster of Israelite mythology; see Job 3:8; 7:12; 38:8–9.
26. The Hebrew is unintelligible as written. Following Tur-Sinai, many now divide the word shamayim, “sky,” in the middle and read: sam yam sipro, “he put Yamm into his net,” which has a precise parallel in the scene of combat between the Babylonian storm-god Marduk and the old sea goddess Ti’awat in the epic myth Enuma Elish. The Hebrew sipro “his net” reflects the Babylonian word for “net,” saparru, which is cognate to Hebrew siprah “bag” in Psalm 56:9 and perhaps the word shaprir “net(?)” in Jeremiah 43:10.
27. Literally, “fleeing”; it is an archaic epithet of the primordial sea monster in Canaanite (Ugaritic) mythology and in Isaiah 27:1.
28. Compare Job 28:24.
29. Like the tip of the iceberg.
30. More literally, “But what hint of a word is heard of it?”
31. Thunder is often understood as the voice of the deity; for example Psalm 18:14.