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Job's Reply to Bildad

You Have Really Been Helpful

26 Job said:
You have really been helpful
    to someone weak and weary.
You have given great advice
and wonderful wisdom
    to someone truly in need.
How can anyone possibly speak
    with such understanding?

Remember the terrible trembling
of those in the world of the dead
    below the mighty ocean.
Nothing in that land
of death and destruction
    is hidden from God,
who hung the northern sky
and suspended the earth
    on empty space.
God stores water in clouds,
    but they don't burst,
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

  1. 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).
  2. 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).

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