Job 9:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Bildad has just posed the question: ‘Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?’ and asserted that ‘God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers’, and Job admits that this is irrefutable. ‘I know it is so of a truth’, he says, ‘but how should man be just with God?’ It must be true given the character of God, but not in the sense that Bildad means it. Bildad is implying much more than this truth warrants. He is using it to interpret what is happening to Job as an indication of God’s displeasure with Job, and he has no right to do that. He is assuming the reason that he and the other two comforters are not experiencing the same afflictions is because, unlike Job, they are just with God. God accepts their efforts to keep his commandments, even though they do not do so perfectly. He is content to recognise human righteousness, even though it falls short of his own perfection, because at least they are striving towards the right goal. This is all that God requires of men. He does not require the sort of perfection that Job says is necessary. ‘How should man be just with God?’ There are two reasons that Job might make this point. He could be saying it to express the difficulty he feels in ever being a perfect man himself. This would indicate that he himself does not know how a man is justified with God, and that he himself is still searching for the way of salvation. But that is not how Job is presented anywhere in the book. He is not a man who has never known the Lord, or who has never found the Lord and never felt the peace of being accepted. He knows how to come to God and what it is to be his child. Alternately, he could be raising an objection against Bildad’s theology and his simplistic view of things, and this is far better as an explanation of the words. When God uses the term ‘a perfect man’ (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3), he means a man who is regenerate, who has the law in his heart, who is free from hypocrisy and guile. Nevertheless he means a man who is justified by faith; he is not describing Job as one who is good enough to stand in his presence, or is without sin. But when Bildad uses the phrase he refers to a man like himself, who is accepted on his own merits, and who has achieved a certain level of righteousness which passes God’s test. Job picks up on Bildad’s use of the phrase and presses him about it. ‘If you want to approach God on your own merits, Bildad, then how perfect to you need to be? You have said that God will not cast away a perfect man. Think about what that means. Am I perfect? Are you perfect, Bildad? Who can be? And if no one can be perfect, then what does the statement that “God will not cast away a perfect man” mean? Not what you think it means.’ Job therefore is expounding the inadequacy of human righteousness. ‘If I claim to be righteous,’ says Job, ‘that very statement will be my condemnation.’ If I come to God seeking to prove I am acceptable to him as I am, then I will find myself contending with him, and I can never win. His skill, his knowledge, his strength, and his holiness are such that I will be unable to defend myself. To come like that, trying to prove that I am right and he is wrong, would be to harden myself against him, and I cannot succeed. No one can argue with God.