Job 26King James Version
Job answers with gentle mockery. How hast thou helped him that is without power? How have you supported the arm that hath no strength? Then he sings a hymn of his own about God's power and majesty. Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him.
Job responds to Bildad with biting sarcasm: how helpful you have been to the powerless! How much wisdom you have given to someone without strength! Job then launches into a more magnificent description of God's power than anything the friends have offered: the dead tremble, Sheol is naked before God, he stretches the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. These are just the edges of his ways. His thunder is beyond knowing.
Job's description of God's power exceeds anything the friends have said. He is not disputing divine greatness; he is insisting that greatness doesn't answer his specific complaint.
14: "Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?" Job acknowledges that everything visible of God is only the edge of his reality. The friends have been speaking as if they have God figured out.
Ancient cosmological ideas about the earth hanging on nothing, Rahab the chaos monster being pierced, the pillars of heaven trembling: Job is drawing on the mythological imagery of the ancient world while asserting that the reality behind those images is beyond all of them. The poetry is ancient Near Eastern; the insight is startling.
Job speaks. His sarcasm toward Bildad in the opening verses is sharp. He then shifts to a hymn of divine power that is among the most beautiful in the Bible. The contrast between the tone of the opening and the tone of the hymn is deliberate.
The cosmological description of God hanging the earth on nothing and stretching the north over empty space is remarkable in its scientific intuition. Job is not offering a cosmology to argue a point; he is asserting that divine reality overflows any container the friends have built for it.
There is something powerful in a suffering man praising the greatness of the God who has not answered him. Job does it here without pretense. He is not worshipping in order to earn restoration. He is stating what he knows, even in the dark.
1But Job answered and said,
2How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength?
3How hast thou counselled him that hath no wisdom? and how hast thou plentifully declared the thing as it is?
4To whom hast thou uttered words? and whose spirit came from thee?
5Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.
6Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering.
7He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
8He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them.
9He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it.
10He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.
11The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof.
12He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud.
13By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.
14Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?