Bible Strands
Job 26:5
The dead tremble—those beneath the waters and those who dwell in them.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Job delivers this statement in a rhetorical speech to his friends, immediately following his question about whose spirit is speaking through him. He describes the unseen realm while outlining God's absolute sovereignty over all creation.
The words — The Hebrew רְפָאִים (repha’im) translates literally to "the shades," and יְחוֹלָלוּ (yecholalu) means "they are made to tremble." These terms describe the dead beneath the waters and their inhabitants reacting to divine presence.
The thread — This imagery of the dead and waters appears in Genesis 6:4, Psalm 88:10, and Job 41:1, which explore the boundary between the living and the dead or the chaos waters. These references consistently treat the underworld as a real but subordinate realm under divine scrutiny.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that the realm of the dead is fully exposed and subject to God's authority. It asks the reader to acknowledge that no hidden place escapes divine oversight.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof.
Cross-references
- Genesis 6:4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.
- Psalms 88:10 Do You work wonders for the dead? Do departed spirits rise up to praise You? Selah
- Job 41:1 “Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie down his tongue with a rope?
- Psalms 104:25 Here is the sea, vast and wide, teeming with creatures beyond number, living things both great and small.
- Ezekiel 29:3 Speak to him and tell him that this is what the Lord GOD says: Behold, I am against you, O Pharaoh king of Egypt, O great monster who lies among his rivers, who says, ‘The Nile is mine; I made it myself.’