Job 25:2 Commentary and Bible Study

So Bildad asks, ‘How can man be righteous before God?’ The question is brief but to the point, for this – from the point of view of the three – is still the issue between the comforters and Job. All that Job has said has tended in this direction: that it is possible for a man to be regarded as righteous before God, and furthermore that Job is such a man. This is where all he had said about the wicked, about the character of God, about the comforters, and about himself was leading. Bildad on the other hand believed in a relative righteousness: no man can claim to be righteous in God’s eyes because we are so inferior to him; the only righteousness which we can ever have is a relative righteousness, and within this group of human beings possessing relative righteousness some are more holy and others are less holy. Bildad counted himself among the more holy and believed that God condescends to human weakness. Man is accepted by God on his own merits and not on the basis of a righteousness given by God; this is his view. God is so high above the earth, says Bildad, and his being is so majestic, that it is impossible for him to truly reach down to the level of the creature. Neither can man rise to the level of Creator. How can one who is born of woman, with all man’s limitations and sinfulness, inheriting a sinful nature from Adam and unable to free himself from this; how can such a one be pure? If even the moon does not shine because, by comparison, its light is so feeble that it is no light at all, and if the stars which are so much more enduring than man, and which are so clear by night but which fade out entirely during the day; if they too are not pure in God’s sight, but are part of a world that has been cursed on account of sin and will be destroyed ultimately, then what is man by comparison with him? He is no more than a maggot, feeding on putrid substances and a worm by comparison with God. The comparison is true thought understated of course, but it reduces man to shame to think about it.There cannot be any true interaction between God and man, for the gulf that separates them can never be bridged, and God does not attempt to cross it in any real sense. His perfect holiness and his perfect justice stand in the way of this, and there is no means by which they can be set aside or satisfied. All that the Lord can do therefore is to condescend to man’s smallness and inadequacy. He must forget, as it were, about his transcendence, and relate to man who is far below him as if they were on the same level. It is an exercise in make-believe, but no a real point of contact. This is Bildad’s attempt to justify God more than Job but it fails completely. It misses out too many of the realities of the situation and leaves too much unexplained to be taken seriously. Bildad and his friends have found no answer for what is happening to Job and yet they have condemned him: such is the verdict of Elihu. Bildad does not speak again.