Commentary on
The Book of Job

Chapter Twenty-five: Bildad Interrupts

Bildad Interrupts
- A Final Note on the Friends

Bildad Interrupts

Job: chapter 25
¹ Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,

² Dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace in his high places.
³ Is there any number of his armies? and upon whom doth not his light arise?
⁴ How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?
⁵ Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.
⁶ How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?

Bildad's final speech is short (five lines). Zophar has no third speech, but Job's reply covers six chapters. As a result, many commentators have devised various ways to reorganize the material so that Bildad has more to say, and Zophar has a third speech. While all of this may be, there is no way to substantiate any of it, so I comment on the dialog as it is written.

God is all powerful and all knowing (25:2-3). “How then can man be justified with God” (25:4)? “How can he be clean” (25:4)? To God, the sun and the moon are dim, and the stars are not pure (25:5). “How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm” (25:6)?

Bildad's argument is fizzling. He hasn't been able to legitimately pin Job down to any particular sin so he resorts to the ‘everyone is sinful’ argument. Everything he says here is scriptural. This of course means that Bildad and the other friends are included. Using this standard as a basis, however, do they understand that Job's agony, if deserved, is, therefore, also their just reward? Teased out, this argument is not likely to please Bildad at all.

The argument also contains the implication of Eliphaz's vision: you mean nothing to God. If God chooses to destroy you, He will. The love and mercy of God are not within Bildad's experience, at least not as he gazes on Job.

Barnes notes: “At this stage of the controversy, since they had nothing to reply to what Job had alleged, it would have been honorable in them to have acknowledged that they were in error, and to have yielded the palm of victory to him. But it requires extraordinary candor and humility to do that; and rather than do it, most people would prefer to say something – though it has nothing to do with the case in hand” (Barnes, notes to 25:6).

A Final Note on the Friends

Author Philip Yancey suggests that if chapters 3 thru 37 where presented without the prologue in heaven (chapters 1-2) or God's dialogue and acquittal (chapters 38-42), the three friends and Elihu would look much better in the eyes of subsequent generations:

“To truly grasp the prescience and timelessness of the book, consider the arguments of Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar in light of contemporary thinking. Does God send suffering as punishment for sins? Ask any hospitalized Christian whether he or she has heard that suggestion. The most vigorous assertion of Job's friend's – that God makes good men prosper and evil men stumble – I hear virtually every time I watch religious television. Those programs say little about Job's kind of faith, which perseveres even when nothing works out the way it should. Christians today may also claim a ‘word of knowledge’ to back up their beliefs, as did Eliphaz. He appeals to a cryptic vision of a ‘spirit’ who restates Eliphaz's own line of argument and even implies that Job should turn to God for a miracle (4:12-17, 5:8-10).

In short, Job's friend's emerge as self-righteous dogmatists who defend the mysterious ways of God. Confident of their proper doctrine and sound arguments, they cast judgment on Job. To them the issue seems clear-cut: given a choice between a man who claims to be just and a God they know to be just, what possible defense could Job have?” (Yancey 1999, 55).

Oswald Chambers speaks to the rigid beliefs of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar: “The friend's speeches prove that when Providence or suffering contradicts any form of creedal belief, the holder of the creed becomes vindictive in trying to justify what is threatened, and no longer discerns the truth” (Chambers 1990, 88 & 89). Because their creed says that they are right with God, the three friends doggedly cling to their creed in defense against the uncertainty that its invalidation would bring. They could be learning from Job's plight. God could be teaching them as well as Job, but they love their creed more than the truth. The truth is that they do not have a living relationship with God. The tradition of knowledge that they have is threadbare and, in this case, an obstruction.

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*All Bible quotes are from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.

Commentary onThe Book of Job

Chapter Twenty-five: Bildad Interrupts

Bildad Interrupts

A Final Note on the Friends

Commentary on
The Book of Job