Relationship, Not Righteousness

INTRO

These chapters wrap up the third cycle of speeches in Job. Throughout each speech, each person had pushed their viewpoint, and no one had given an inch. Bildad speaks for the last time in chapter 25. Bildad’s position has been consistent throughout all his speeches. He routinely called on Job to repent and be saved. Job consistently claims his innocence, to which Bildad replies once more.

TEACHING

Job 25:1–6: Bildad’s final response to Job highlights his traditionalist understanding of God and sin. McKenna observes, “Tradition has no answer for radical changes in the circumstances of life.”¹ Job challenges his friends in chapter 24 to prove his claims about the injustices in the world being untrue. Instead of responding directly to Job, Bildad’s comments were brief, focused on God, and summed up his previous conclusions. Bildad had no real answer to Job’s observations and claims.

Bildad’s final response is a doxology of praise to God. Every attribute of God he highlights was true, but each attribute was also incomplete. The God Bildad praised was in a box. God was powerful, God was perfection, and God was pure, but God didn’t resemble the God of Job who offered His presence through interaction.

Bildad asked, “How can one born of woman be pure” (v. 4)? The answer was simply that we couldn’t be born pure. Interestingly, this was a conclusion Job reached all the way back in chapter 14: “Who can produce something pure from what is impure? No one!” (Job 14:4). Isaiah also wrestled with this question: “All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind” (Isaiah 64:6). Isaiah also saw the Savior that bridged the gap between man and God: “We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the LORD has punished him for the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).

Bildad contended that man was unable to stand before God, which was closer to the truth than Job’s position that he would be able to stand before God because of his righteousness. Bildad had an unmovable, fixed image of an impassable God who could never stoop to meet man, whereas Job had a dynamic faith in which he learned more about God through his suffering as God met him in the midst of it. McKenna noted, “Although [Job] has a problem of his own righteous conceit, he has demonstrated that he is open to change. If Bildad and Job were alive at the advent of Christ, we could expect that Bildad would side with the Pharisees while Job would cry, ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’”²

To conclude his doxology, Bildad drew a comparison between God and man by comparing man to “a maggot” and “a worm.” While his friend sat before him during unspeakable suffering, Bildad’s final word to him was to call him a maggot and a worm. David wrestled with the same understanding of man in comparison to God: “When I observe the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You set in place, what is man that You remember him, the son of man that You look after him? You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3–5). David’s questions were similar to Bildad’s, but he came to a completely opposite conclusion. Bildad believed man to be a worm while David saw the glory of being created in God’s image.³

Job 26:1–4: Job’s tone changes in his response to Bildad. As his frustration mounts with his friends over how they chose to pontificate on their beliefs rather than listen and respond to his complaint, Job became sarcastic. Bildad was the friend who was known for his wisdom, yet he failed Job. McKenna observed, Job “resents the hostile tone of voice that reflects not the spirit of God but the spirit of a self-defensive man tainted with a touch of the demonic.”⁴ McKenna proposed that Job paused after speaking the first four verses to allow his friends an opportunity to respond. Neither Zophar, Bildad, or Eliphaz had anything further to say, so Job’s speech continued.⁵

Job 26:5–14: Job points out that death was a reality mankind faced, but God’s power in heaven and on earth extends into what is beyond death. Mankind will not be able to hide from God, even in death, because God will judge us: “And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

In light of this, Job praises God for His power in creation. Job uses a series of word pictures to describe God as a divine architect. God “stretches the northern skies” (v. 7), “wraps up the water in His clouds” (v. 8), “obscures the view of His throne” (v. 9), “laid out the horizon on the surface of the waters” (v. 10), causes the pillars that hold up the sky to shake when He rebukes them (v. 11), stirs up the sea (v. 12), and “by His breath, the heavens gained their beauty” (v. 13). After listing the evidences for God’s power, Job bowed in humility before God: “These are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the word we hear of Him! Who can understand His mighty thunder?” (v. 14).

CLOSING

Job would continue to wrestle with his own righteousness. He still didn’t understand how and why all that had happened to him. But he began to understand it was somehow about being in relationship with God.