Job 26 - Introduction

Job 25-27. offer a difficult critical problem. The phenomena which excite attention are these: (a) Bildad's speech is unusually short; (b) Job's reply contains a section (Job 26:5) very like Bildad's speech; (c) Zophar fails to speak; (d) ch. 27 has a title prefixed, which has no real parallel elsewhere in the middle of a speech belonging to the original poem (ch. 29 forming no real exception); (e) the greater part of ch. 27 so completely contradicts Job's views as elsewhere expressed, that it seems very hard to believe that it can have formed part of this speech (Peake).

Here what is a very usual rearrangement will be adopted. We shall take Job 25 and Job 26:5 as Bildad's speech, Job 26:1 and Job 27:2 as Job's reply, and Job 27:7 as the missing third speech of Zophar. This seems the simplest arrangement, though it is open to objections. For this and alternative views, see Peake's Commentary.