NOTES for Job 26:1-14
In answering Bildad, Job asks him directly: whose breath came from you when you answered me? Then, as though parodying his opponent, Job delivers an equally vivid speech about God's greatness, composed, like Bildad's, of commonplaces. Yet Job's principal answer to Bildad remains that very question about breath. The author of the book uses the same word here as the Book of Genesis uses, in its account of the creation of the human being, for the breath of life given by God to humanity at creation. The breath given by God that makes a human being human. This does not mean that Job is accusing Bildad of having fallen under the power of dark forces and of no longer speaking for himself.
Job is asking something else: where do your words come from? Are they really yours? Is it your true self that is speaking them? The breath of life given to a human being by God is the foundation of personhood, its spiritual core. If someone speaks from that depth, their words are authentic. Just as their life is authentic if they live at that depth and, in living, reveal it to those with whom they commune. Sadly, this does not happen often. Far more often, fallen humanity lives differently. More superficially. Without genuine depth or true fullness. And people defend this shallow life of theirs. Genuine depth, like true fullness, needs neither defense nor justification.
It is enough to discover that depth within oneself and allow it to manifest itself in all its fullness; nothing more is required. There are no threats in the world to authentic life. But for a shallow life, one not rooted in that breath of life which alone can be its true spiritual root, such a threat does exist. And here it no longer matters whether someone is religious or nonreligious, learned or unlearned, confident or not. For all these things are artificial, not rooted in authentic life.
Even religion: for it too is, after all, the work of human hands and minds. And if someone lives by these artificial things instead of the true breath of life, they will be unable to say anything of substance. At any rate, in Job's situation. Here, if answers and explanations are to be sought, they can be found only there, in the ultimate depths. But Bildad does not delve so deeply into himself; he prefers a more superficial existence. And Job senses this. He asks his friend a direct question: by what breath do you speak the words you speak? Then he himself demonstrates his ability to utter generalities that are worth nothing.