Job 26 Commentary: Have you ever been party to an argument in which both people are making the same points – but somehow amazingly both are in disagreement?

Well, this is exactly the situation that the biblical character Job finds himself in – in Job chapter 26. So let’s turn our attention to Job 26.

And in this chapter, Job is responding to the last short speech by his friend Bildad. And in that speech, Bildad basically pointed to God’s power and to the inability of a person like Job to be viewed as righteous by God.

And we’re going to see Job being very frustrated in chapter 26 partly because he and Bildad basically see eye-to-eye on the matter of God’s power. Job’s not at all disagreeing with Bildad on that point. And he’s going to make that abundantly clear a few verses into this chapter.

But before he gets to that, Job wants to express his utter disgust for his friend’s unhelpful speech to him in the last chapter.

And so, Job begins his response to Bildad’s last speech with biting sarcasm that’s meant to inform Bildad that his words were no help whatsoever to him.

KJV Job 26:1 [But/Then] Job [answered and said/responded/replied],

2 [How hast thou helped/What a help you are to/How you have helped] [him that is without power/the weak/the powerless] [?/!]

So, Job is the one without power. He’s the arm that has no strength. He needs to be helped. He needs to be saved – rescued – delivered from his problems.

But instead of helping and saving Job, Bildad’s speech did nothing of the sort.

And, we also need to note that Job’s not asking questions here – like how did you do that? He’s pretending to marvel – like what an excellent wonderful job you just did there!

And taken at face value, Job is being very complimentary to Bildad. But that’s the force of sarcasm. The listener will try to process it like normal communication and it makes no sense – because it’s just the opposite of what the communicator really thinks.

And surely Bildad knew that Job was not pleased with what he said in the last chapter. And to have Job basically extol his words would be unexpected, to say the least. And when Bildad figured out that Job was not literally truthful in his statements, he would have been very insulted.

Well, Job continues with his sarcastic statements in verse 3.

3 [How hast thou counselled/What counsel you have given to/How you have advised] him that hath no wisdom [?/!]

Now, Job does not consider himself to be without wisdom. He’s made that clear throughout this book as he’s been trying to defend himself against the accusation of his friends that he’s secretly wicked.

But Job is saying here that if he was one of those who lacked wisdom, Bildad’s speech was so incredibly helpful! It was fantastic counsel to him. Bildad plentifully declared the thing as it is. He gave wonderfully abundant and helpful insight…

And of course, Job truly means none of this. His real feelings concerning Bildad’s speech are just the opposite.

Job would believe that Bildad proved himself to have no wisdom. His counsel was worthless. His plentiful declarations were plentiful – but not helpful at all to Job.

Bildad’s whole point in chapter 25 seemed to be that no one can possibly be righteous in God’s estimation. The friends had tri