Job26chapter 26

Job's opening is withering sarcasm: how hast thou helped him that is without power? how savest thou the arm that hath no strength? Then he does what Bildad tried to do, properly.

He starts below. Sheol is naked before him, and Abaddon — the place of destruction — has no covering. The ancient world thought of the realm of the dead as the most hidden place there was; Job says it lies open.

Then the middle: 'he stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing'. Every neighbouring culture propped the world on something — a cosmic sea, a turtle, pillars, a god's shoulders. This line has the earth suspended over emptiness, and it stands out sharply against everything else written in that age. He goes on to describe water bound up in thick clouds without the cloud bursting, the face of God's throne covered, and a circle drawn on the face of the waters where light ends and darkness begins — the horizon at sea.

The 'pillars of heaven' that tremble are the mountains at the edge of the sky, which is how the range on a distant horizon looks. And when Job says God divides the sea by his power and smites through Rahab, and that his hand has formed the crooked serpent, he is using the sea-monster language his whole world used for chaos. He is not endorsing the old stories; he is saying that whatever monsters those stories feared, God handled them, and even this is only the outer fringe of his ways — a whisper of him, when the thunder of his power no one can understand.