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Job

About this book
Chapter 26

1 Then Job replied: 2 “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the person who has no strength! 3 How you have advised the one without wisdom, and abundantly revealed your insight! 4 To whom did you utter these words? And whose spirit has come forth from your mouth? 5 “The dead tremble—those beneath the waters and all that live in them.⁠ 6 The underworld is naked before God; the place of destruction lies uncovered. 7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth on nothing. 8 He locks the waters in his clouds, and the clouds do not burst with the weight of them. 9 He conceals the face of the full moon, shrouding it with his clouds. 10 He marks out the horizon on the surface of the waters as a boundary between light and darkness. 11 The pillars of the heavens tremble⁠ and are amazed at his rebuke.⁠ 12 By his power he stills the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab the great sea monster to pieces.⁠ 13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14 Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of his ways! How faint is the whisper we hear of him! But who can understand the thunder of his power?”

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 74:13 and Job 26:12

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Psalm 74 and Job 26 echo a story of divine combat, where the chaotic sea is defeated by a deity. This follows ancient Near Eastern tradition where order is established by defeating chaos, seen in Baal’s battle with Yamm and Marduk’s with Tiamat.

Passages

Psalm 74:13

Hebrew Bible
11 Why do you remain inactive? Intervene and destroy him. 12 But God has been my king from ancient times, performing acts of deliverance on the earth. 13 You destroyed the sea by your strength; you shattered the heads of the sea monster in the water. 14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you fed him to the people who live along the coast. 15 You broke open the spring and the stream; you dried up perpetually flowing rivers.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

Job 26:12

Hebrew Bible
10 He marks out the horizon on the surface of the waters as a boundary between light and darkness. 11 The pillars of the heavens tremble and are amazed at his rebuke. 12 By his power he stills the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab the great sea monster to pieces. 13 By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14 Indeed, these are but the outer fringes of his ways! How faint is the whisper we hear of him! But who can understand the thunder of his power?”
500–401 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Job

References

"... Perhaps the most striking instance of this typological understanding of the exodus (and of history more generally) is found in Isaiah 51:9-11, which calls on “the arm of YHWH” to awake as in the days of old. The prophet first recalls creation: “Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?” This is not the account of creation that we find in Genesis, but one that we know only from passing allusions in Hebrew poetry, such as Job 26:12 or Psalm 74:13-14. It is closely related to the stories of Baal and Yamm in the Ugaritic myths and less directly to the Babylonian myth of Marduk and Tiamat ..."
John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018), 408–409.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Psalm 74:13 and Job 26:12

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