On the Power of God
(Job 26:14) “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?”
In the previous chapter, Bildad had lectured Job on the dominion and power of God, and on the purity of his righteousness, from which he argued that no man could be justified in God’s presence, since man is no better than a worm. In this chapter Job acknowledges God’s power and expands on it more fully than Bildad had done, but he prefaces his own speech with a kind of ironic jab, as though Bildad had not spoken as a true friend, or had missed the actual point at issue. Job’s subject had been the worldly prosperity of the wicked and the sufferings of the godly.
Bildad answered instead with a lecture on the extent of God’s dominion, the number of his armies, and the spotless righteousness of his nature, next to which even the purest creatures are foul and crooked. So in verses 1 through 4, Job mocks him for missing the point, for wandering from the matter at hand and applying no remedy fit for the actual wound (verse 2): “How hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm of him that hath no strength?” and so on; your speech is so beside the point, Job says, that it will neither strengthen the weak nor instruct the simple (Munster).
But since Bildad had raised the subject of God’s power and treated it so briefly, Job sets out to show that he needs no instruction on that score, and that he has a fuller grasp of it than his opponent had expressed. So from verse 5 to the end of the chapter he speaks grandly of God’s power in several forms. In verse 5 he begins with the lowest: “Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.” You have lectured me, Job says in effect, on God’s power in the heavenly host.
That power is visible there, true, but it reaches further still, and its monuments appear in the lower world too. What of the dead things beneath the earth and the waters, the grain that dies and, watered by the clouds, springs up again in numerous increase for man’s nourishment? What of the varieties of metal and mineral conceived in the belly of the earth, the pearls and riches in the depths of the sea, all midwifed by this power of God? Add to these the vast and varied creatures of the sea, all births of God’s power, both in their first creation by his mighty word and in their ongoing propagation by his sustaining providence.
Nor does his power stop there. It reaches even to hell, whether that means the graves, the resting places of all the crumbled dust that has ever passed through the world (for that is sometimes what Scripture means by “hell”: verse 6, “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering”). The various resting places of the dead are known to him. No screen can hide them from his sight, and their dissolution poses no obstacle to his power, when the time comes to reassemble those decayed bodies to receive again their departed souls, for reward or for judgment. The grave, or hell, the place of punishment, lies naked before him, seen as distinctly as we see the parts of a naked body, or as a skilled eye sees a dissected one.
Destruction has no covering; no one can escape the power of his hand. Every person in the depths of hell, every person punished there, is known to him and feels the power of his wrath. From the lower parts of the world Job rises to consider God’s power in the creation of heaven and earth: “He stretches out the north over the empty places” (verse 7). The north, or north pole, spreads over the air, which the Greeks called void or empty because of its thinness; and Job names the north for the whole heaven because it is more familiar and visible than the southern pole. “And hangs the earth upon nothing”: the massive, weighty earth hangs like a heavy globe in the middle of thin air, with as much air on one side of it as the other.
The heavens have no prop to hold them up in their height, and the earth has no foundation to support it in its place. The heavens are like a curtain stretched smooth in the air with no hand holding it up, and the earth is like a ball hanging in the air with no solid body beneath it and no cord to keep it from falling, both standing as monuments to God’s omnipotence.
He then turns to God’s daily power in the clouds: “He binds up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them” (verse 8). God gathers the waters together in clouds and holds them there by his power against their natural weight and gravity, until they are ready to fall on the earth and do the work he intends for them. “The cloud is not rent under them”; the thin air is not torn apart by the weight of the water held in the cloud above it. He causes the water to fall in drops, straining it, so to speak, through a fine cloth, to refresh the earth, and does not let it fall all at once in a violent flood that would ruin man’s labor and bring famine on the world by destroying its fruits. What a wonder it would be to see even a single drop of water hang just one inch above the ground, unless it were a bubble held by the air enclosed within it!
What a wonder to see a gallon of water held in a thin cobweb as securely as in a vessel of brass! Yet greater is the wonder of divine power in those thin “bottles of heaven,” as they are called (Job 38:37), so called here because they are daily proofs of his omnipotence. That the air should hold up those rolling vessels, apparently heavier than itself; that the force of that mass of water should not burst so thin a prison and rush down to its natural place below the air; that the water should be held day after day against its own inclination by so slight a restraint; that it should fall so gradually and steadily, as if the air were pierced with holes like a gardener’s watering can, rather than falling all at once to flood or drown parts of the earth. These are hourly miracles of divine power, as little noticed as they are plainly visible.
He continues (verse 9): “He holds back the face of his throne, and spreads the clouds upon it.” The clouds serve as curtains covering the heavens, as well as vessels watering the earth (Ps 147:8), like a tapestry hung between the heavens (God’s throne, Isa 66:1) and the earth, his footstool. The heavens are called his throne because his power shines forth most clearly there, magnificently declaring God’s glory; and the clouds serve as a screen between the scorching sun and the tender plants of the earth and the weak bodies of men.
From here Job turns to the sea, and considers God’s power evident in bounding it (verse 10): “He hath compassed the waters with bounds, till the day and night come to an end.” Scripture repeatedly points to this as a clear mark of divine strength (Job 38:8; Prov 8:27). He has measured out a place for the sea and marked its limits as though with a compass, so that it cannot rise above the land and ruin the purpose of the earth’s creation. And this holds true through the passing of day and night, until he shall bring time itself to an end. In many places the boundaries of the raging sea are as fragile as the “bottles” of the upper waters: one is contained by thin air, the other held back by weak sand in many places, though by unyielding rock in others.
So even when the sea swells, foams, roars, and its waves, driven on by strong winds, come like mountains against the shore, they do not overrun it. Instead they humble themselves as they near the sand set as their limit, and withdraw again to the depths that bore them, as if ashamed and repenting of their proud attack. Or this may refer instead to the tides of the sea, and the fixed times God has appointed for its ebb and flow, until night and day come to an end. Either way, that the fluid waters should stay within their bounds, and keep up their perpetually ordered motion, are astonishing proofs of divine power.
Job then turns to the commotions God raises and stills in the air and the earth: “The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof.” By “pillars of heaven” he does not mean angels, as some suppose, but either the air, called the pillars of heaven because of its place, holding the parts of the world together as pillars join the upper and lower parts of a building, just as the lowest parts of the earth are its foundation.
Called the foundations of the earth, so the lowest parts of the heavens may be called the pillars of heaven (Cocceius, on this passage). Or else by that phrase mountains may be meant, which seem, at a distance, to touch the sky, as pillars touch the top of a structure. This is spoken according to common understanding, which imagines the heavens as sustained by the two extreme parts of the earth, as a convex body arched by pillars. So Scripture, following ordinary perception, mentions the ends of the earth and the utmost parts of the heavens, though properly they have no end, being round.
The power of God is seen in the commotions of air and earth, in thunders, lightnings, storms, and earthquakes, which rack the air and make the mountains and hills tremble like servants before a frowning master. And as he stirs the earth and air, so his power appears in his influence over the sea: “He judges the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smites through the proud” (verse 12). At creation he set the waters into their channels and made the dry land appear as a habitation for man and beast. Or rather, he splits the sea with storms, as if to lay bare the bottom of the deep, raking the sand up to the surface and marshaling the waves into mountains and valleys. Then “he smites through the proud,” that is, he humbles the proud waves, and by calming the storm brings them back to their former level. The power of God shows as clearly in stilling the winds as in stirring them; he makes them obey his voice, exasperating or calming them as he pleases.
The “striking through the proud” here probably does not refer to the destruction of the Egyptian army, since some judge that Job died that year, (Drusius, on this passage), or around the time of Israel’s coming out of Egypt. This discourse, spoken during Job’s affliction, could hardly point to something that happened after his restoration to prosperity.
Now, at last, Job sums up the power of God in the greatest of his works above and the greatest wonder of his works below (verse 13): “By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent,” etc. The greater and lesser lights, sun, moon, and stars, are the ornaments and furniture of heaven, and the whale is a prodigious monument of God’s power, often mentioned in Scripture for this purpose, particularly in this book of Job (ch. 41), and called by the same name of crooked serpent in Isaiah 27:1, where it is applied metaphorically to the king of Assyria or Egypt, or to all oppressors of the church.
Interpreters differ on this crooked serpent: some take it for the constellation astronomers call the dragon, others for the galaxy, that band of fainter stars winding through the heavens. But it is most likely that Job, drawing toward the conclusion of his discourse, joins the two greatest testimonies of God’s power in the world: the highest heavens and the lowest leviathan, here called a bar serpent (as the word signifies in Hebrew), in reference to his strength and hardness, as mighty men are called bars in Scripture: “Her bars are broken things” (Jer 51:30). And because of this display of God’s power in creating this creature, it is particularly named in the catalogue of God’s works, (Gen 1:21): “And God created great whales,” while all the other creatures are lumped together without particular mention.
Job then applies this lesson in the text: “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?” This is only a small glimpse of some of his works of power, the outer edges of it; far more glorious things lie within his own dwelling. Though these works display a stupendous power of the Creator in creation and providence, they are nothing compared to what could be declared of his power. And what could be declared is nothing compared to what could be conceived, and what could be conceived is nothing compared to what lies beyond the conception of any creature. These are mere crumbs and fragments of that infinite power, which, compared to his nature, is like a drop beside the mighty ocean, a whisper beside a peal of thunder (Oecolampadius). What has been said here is like a spark beside the sun, a few lines mentioned in passing, a mere drop of speech.
