Job 26:14

14 Behold, these are the edges of His ways, And how do we hear only a whisper thereof! But the thunder of His might - who comprehendeth it? These (אלּה retrospective, as in Job 18:21) are only קצות, the extremest end-points or outlines of the ways of God, which Job has depicted; the wondrous fulness of His might, which extends through the whole creation, transcends human comprehension; it is only שׁמץ דּבר therefrom that becomes audible to us men. שׁמץ (שׁמץ) is translated by Symm. here ψιθύρισμα, Job 4:12, ψιτηυρισμός; the Arab. šamiṣa (to speak very quickly, mutter) confirms this idea of the word; Jerome's translation, vix. parvam stillam sermonis ejus (comp. Job 4:12, venas, tropical for parts), is doubly erroneous: the rendering of the שׁמץ has the antithesis of רעם against it, and דּבר is not to be understood here otherwise than in ערות דּבר, Deu 23:15; Deu 24:1 : shame of something = something that excites a feeling of shame, a whisper of something = some whisper. The notion "somewhat," which the old expositors attribute to שׁמץ, lies therefore in דבר. מה is exclamatory in a similar manner as in Psa 89:48 : how we hear (נשׁמע, not נשׁמע) only some whisper thereof (בּו partitive, as e.g., Isa 10:22), i.e., how little therefrom is audible to us, only as the murmur of a word, not loud and distinct, which reaches us! As in the speech of Bildad the poet makes the opposition of the friends to fade away and cease altogether, as incapable of any further counsel, and hence as conquered, so in Job's closing speech, which consists of three parts, Job 26:1, Job 27:1, Job 29:1, he shows how Job in every respect, as victor, maintains the field against the friends. The friends have neither been able to loose the knot of Job's lot of suffering, nor the universal distribution…

This is Job's short reply to Bildad's short discourse, in which he is so far from contradicting him that he confirms what he had said, and out-does him in magnifying God and setting forth his power, to show what reason he had still to say, as he did (Job 13:2), "What you know, the same do I know also." I. He shows that Bildad's discourse was foreign to the matter he was discoursing of - though very true and good, yet not to the purpose (Job 26:2-4). II. That it was needless to the person he was discoursing with; for he knew it, and believed it, and could speak of it as well as he and better, and could add to the proofs which he had produced of God's power and greatness, which he does in the rest of his discourse (Job 26:5-13), concluding that, when they had both said what they could, all came short of the merit of the subject and it was still far from being exhausted (Job 26:14).