Chapters 25 and 26 are the last interchange between Job and his three friends. Eliphaz has already spoken three times, Bildad now speaks for the third time very briefly, and there is no third speech of Zophar. Clearly the friends are giving up on persuading Job that they are right, that his suffering is due to unacknowledged sin.
But Job is as full of argument as ever. He has answered each of his friends as they have spoken, so that, counting his first speech (in which he cursed the day of his birth), he has now spoken eight times. And this ninth speech is very long—all of chapters 27 to 31.
The speech has three parts. In the first part, chapter 26 he answers Bildad directly; the “you” in verses 2–4 is singular, so he is not addressing Eliphaz and Zophar, only Bildad. The second part of the speech begins in chapter 27 with the words “Moreover Job continued his discourse…” It includes also chapter 28. In this part of the speech, he addresses all of his friends; the “you” of 27:5 is plural. The third part of the speech begins in chapter 29 with the words, “Job further continued his discourse…” This part is more soliloquy than direct answer to his friends.
The main point of Bildad’s speech is that man cannot be righteous before God (vv. 4–6). The implication is that Job is engaged in an impossible and foolish exercise. God is too mighty; he has absolute dominion, fearful majesty, innumerable armies and mastery of the great lights that shine on earth. And man is too insignificant, a maggot and a worm.
This is no new point. Eliphaz made it in 4:17–19, 15:14–16 and 22:3–5. In fact, in the two later passages, Eliphaz adds to the arguments of Bildad by saying that man is too sinful. “How much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water (15:16)!” “Is not your wickedness great, and your iniquity without end (22:5)?”
Even Job said something like this in chapter 9. “How can a man be righteous before God (v. 2)?” “Though I were righteous, I could not answer him (v. 15).” “Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me; though I were blameless, it would prove me perverse (v. 20).”
But there is a difference between them The friends believe that there is such a difference between God and man that man is of necessity impure and unrighteous before him. But Job insists that he is righteous and that the only thing that prevents him from proving it to God is that God is so inaccessible and terrifying to him that he cannot make his case or cannot make it effectively. “If He goes by me, I do not see Him; if He moves past, I do not perceive Him (v. 11).” “I am blameless, yet [before God] I do not know myself; I despise my life (v. 21).” “Let Him take His rod away from me, and do not let dread of Him terrify me (v. 34).”
There are those who say that the argument between Job and his friends is about the fundamentals of the gospel. The friends do not believe even that there is a blood of atonement, but Job does. This is not correct. If it were true, they would not have called Job to repentance or described to him the goodness of God to the repentant, as Eliphaz did in 22:23f. Their point was true enough as it stands: man cannot be righteous before God. But they misunderstood the reason for Job’s sufferings. It was this that made Job accuse them of being full of empty talk and worthless physicians. He insists over and over again that sin cannot explain his suffering.
But this is not part of Job’s speech in chapter 26; that comes later. Instead, in the first few verses of the chapter (vv. 2–4) he turns back on Bildad a charge the friends had made against him. They had said that he oppressed the poor or at least neglected his duties to them. Job’s response to Bildad now is, When have you ever done it? “How have you helped him who is without power (v.2)?” He may be accusing him of self-righteousness, and he may even be talking in part about himself when he describes the weak and vulnerable as one without strength and wisdom.
It’s a very bitter question. And the words are even more bitter if they should be read as exclamations rather than questions. The ESV translates “How you have helped him who has no power!” That’s biting sarcasm. Job, driven to distraction by the friends’ refusal to hear him, angrily charges Bildad with gross neglect in the very things where he has said Job must be guilty.
The rest of Job’s speech is about the mighty works of God in creation. Job mentions sheol, earth, waters in the skies, clouds, waters on earth, light and darkness, the sea, storms and heaven, and he sees the manifestations of God’s power in all of them. The dead who are buried at the bottom of the sea, as far from God as it possible for a creature to be, tremble because of him. He knows all there is to know about sheol and Abaddon (the Hebrew behind the word “destruction in verse 6). Nothing in those places is hidden from him. He hangs the earth on nothing (a very sophisticated understanding of the place of the earth in the universe). He makes the clouds strong enough to hold an abundance of water. He hides his throne behind them, so that, though we see the evidence of his presence, we cannot see him. “He marks out a horizon on the surface of the waters as a boundary between light and darkness (v. 10, NET).” The supports of the heavens, and therefore the heavens themselves, tremble at his rebuke, the sound of his thunder. He makes and dissipates the storms on the sea. He set the stars in their places. He is able to kill the fleeing serpent, the leviathan, mightiest of all his creatures (cf. 41:1–34 and Isa 27:1).
All this is the mere edges of his ways, just a whisper about him that we hear. No one can understand the thunder of his power (v. 14). Truly his power is very great.
Job too knows about the greatness of God and can give eloquent expression to it, but he has a different understanding of that power than his friends. To them the power of God implies primarily the righteousness of God. Eliphaz said (5:8–11):
But as for me, I would seek God,
And to God I would commit my cause—
Who does great things and unsearchable,
Marvelous things without number.
He gives rain on the earth,
And sends water on the fields.
He sets on high those who are lowly,
And those who mourn are lifted to safety.
Bildad said (8:5–6),
If you would earnestly seek God And make your supplication to the Almighty (note the name he uses for God), If you were pure and upright, Surely now he would awake for you, And prosper your rightful dwelling place. And Zophar (11:7–11):
Can you search out the deep things of God?
Can you find out the limits of the Almighty?
…
If He passes by, imprisons, and gathers to judgment,
Then who can hinder Him?
They see the manifestations of God’s power in terms of righteousness and judgment. But Job sees the manifestations of God’s power as incomprehensible. He emphatically denies that God’s righteousness explains his suffering. In fact, God crushes him and terrifies him without cause. He even says that God has wronged him (16:11, 19:6) and that he lets the wicked get away with evil (24:12). God is hidden, inaccessible, incomprehensible. There is no explaining his ways.
Job is more right than his friends. Though they talk eloquently about the greatness of God, their pat explanations of his ways are unworthy of him. Job seeks a greater understanding that eludes him. Therefore, his anguish grows and his complaints sometimes come perilously close to railing against God for injustice and cruelty.
The fundamental question between Job and his friends is, “Who is wise?” That’s why from here on there is so much talk of wisdom. And the answer to the question given by God himself is, neither Job nor his friends. The friends have not spoken of him what is right (42:7), and Job has thought that he can contend with the Almighty (40:2). God understands its way and knows its place (28:23), but for man wisdom is not to understand the ways of the Almighty but to fear the Lord and depart from evil.