Job 25:4–6

Bildad spoke for the third time. Like Eliphaz, each of his speeches was shorter than the last. Their compassion and their arguments were running out... His description of the greatness and glory of God is fine and almost poetic. What he says of the sin and uncleanness and insignificance of man, who is like a worm before his Creator, is equally true. But he could only repeat the question Job asked in Job 9: "How then can man be in the right before God?" He made no attempt to answer it, and he did not ask for a mediator, as Job had done. To Bildad it was an unanswerable question.

There is a great deal that is very beautiful in what Bildad said, only it had no bearing on the matter at all. "Dominion and fear are with God; He makes peace in His high places." Yes — but Job's trouble was that he had anything but peace in his low place.

Having in a few grand strokes depicted the greatness of God, Bildad turns to the littleness of man. "How then can man (mortal, frail) be in the right before God?" How can one whose very mortality is a witness of his sinfulness stand before the Almighty? How can one born of woman, with a nature inherited from the disobedient one, be clean in God's sight? Does not every true sight of God's greatness and majesty give us a sense of sin and uncleanness?

How can a criminal stand before a judge, and look for justification, when he is guilty? With man this is impossible... Job's friends could easily have shown how God justifies an innocent man. That would be simple. But Job is guilty — and how then? The law will justify him who keeps it... but if you break it, what can it do for you? And where is the person who has not broken it?... They could not justify the guilty.

There is defilement also. "Behold," says the psalmist, "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Ps. 51:5) "How can he who is born of woman be pure?"... Man may imagine that he can work out a righteousness of his own. He may boast emptily of the dignity of human nature... But if he would stop for a few moments and think over the short passage now open before us, his pride, pomp, dignity, and righteousness would quickly vanish. Instead he might find the solid basis of all true dignity, and the ground of divine righteousness, in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Long ago both Job and his friend Bildad raised the question, "How can man be in the right before God?" (Job 9; 25). Both of them knew that man is fallen and guilty. Their question found no definite answer in Old Testament times... "But now," says the Apostle, "the righteousness of God has been manifested" (Rom. 3:21). It is offered "to all," and it rests "on all who believe." Its foundation is the blood of Christ.

So we generally find the answer to the double question of Job 25:4 in two things. First, the blood for propitiation, which is the righteous ground of our perfect justification. Second, the water of the Word. It comes to us once at the start, in a way that can never be repeated, and by it we are born of God. It then keeps coming, to cleanse our ways in practice.

Jesus was from the outset "holy," compare John 10:36, although "born of woman" (Gal. 4:4); see Job 25:4.

Behold the moon; its light is dim in His holy presence. The sparkling stars are not clean in His sight. How much less is sinful man — a worm of the dust! Bildad selects the heavens at night rather than the sun by day for this noble comparison. "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?" (Ps. 8:3-4)... The moon and stars speak of God in a special way, and by contrast bring home to man his nothingness.

Behold, to the moon, and it shines not, / And the stars are not pure in His eyes: / How much less mortal man, a maggot; / And the son of man, a worm!

God is righteous and holy — ever was such and ever will be; He has "purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong" (Hab. 1:13); the stars in their sparkling beauty "are not pure in His sight" (Job 25:5). Many scriptures show the moral distance between man and his God because of sin.

"How then can man be justified with God?" Job had said exactly that in chapter nine. Bildad was only repeating what Job had said far better than he could... That was all true, but had no bearing.

His description of the greatness and glory of God is fine and almost poetical. What he says about the sin and uncleanness and smallness of man, who is like a worm before his Creator, is just as true. But he could only repeat the question Job asked in Job 9, "How then can man be just with God?" He never tried to answer it. He never asked for a mediator, as Job had done.

Yet we cannot speak of these few sentences with scorn, for they state the two great basic facts that stand out clearly at the close of the book... But Bildad hardly grasps the force of what he says. He ties it to his theory, and so tries to prove that Job is the evil man they have all along insisted he was. But his words were as true for himself and the other friends as for Job.

The first on record is the inquiry of Bildad the Shuhite in Job 25. In view of God's majesty and holiness, he asks how man can be right with Him — "Man, who is a worm? And the Son of man, who is a worm?" David next asks in Psalm 8, "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you care for him?" (He finds the answer: Bildad did not.)

So we should not be surprised at what they concluded. The Shuhite of those early days, and the psalmist in Israel's better times, knew nothing beyond the flesh and the law. Both concluded there was no justification before God. For us it is different, and how blessed that is. When the apostle sums up man's condition and guilt in the short words, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," he is only clearing the ground for the gracious words that follow in the same breath: "and are justified by his grace as a gift."

The worm is used as a symbol to show how extremely feeble man is (Job 17:14; Job 25:6). When Jehovah blessed Israel He said, "Fear not, you worm Jacob" (Isa. 41:14)... In Job 25:6 man is compared to a worm — literally 'a maggot' — a fitting figure of moral corruption.

His description of God's greatness and glory is fine and almost poetic. What he says about man is equally true: man is sinful, unclean and of no account, a worm before his Creator. But he could only repeat the question Job asked in Job 9: "How can a man be in the right before God?" He never tried to answer it. He never asked for a mediator, as Job had done. To Bildad the question had no answer. Perhaps he thought it excused the sin that he and his friends kept charging against unhappy Job.

Job simply rejected the charge that deep evil, covered over by loud claims of piety, was the cause of his terrible trial. But he was as far as Bildad from putting the creature on a false level with the Creator, least of all man, morally corrupt as he is. The lights of heaven have no brightness in His eyes; what then is a sinner worth? Considered on its own, what he urges is unquestionable truth; as a reply and an application to Job, it is perverse and pointless.

Having painted the greatness of God in a few grand strokes, Bildad turns to the littleness of man. "How then can mortal, frail man be in the right before God?" How can someone whose own mortality shows he is a sinner stand before the Almighty? How can one born of woman, with a nature inherited from the disobedient one, be clean in God's sight? Is it not true that every right grasp of the greatness and majesty of God produces a sense of sin and uncleanness? It was so with Job and with these friends at the last.

The first question on record is Bildad the Shuhite's in Job 25. In view of God's majesty and holiness, he asks how man can be right with Him — "man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!" David asks next, in Psalm 8, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you care for him?" David finds the answer; Bildad did not. ... Then, in John 12:34, we have the Jews asking, "How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?" ... Finally, in Hebrews 2:6, it is asked again, "What is man? or the son of man?"

But the patience and lowliness of our Lord comes into view in that dark hour. As the forsaken One, He says, "I am a worm and not a man." He accepts a place of nothingness among the sons of men. He blots out self entirely. Now as always, "Christ pleased not Himself." As "a worm and not a man," He gave up every claim on divine deliverance. This is the crowning evidence of that Blessed One's perfect humility and self-denial.

By nature man has no hope of ever reaching such righteousness and purity, for he is a completely corrupted sinner. Bildad, however, was not applying this humbling lesson to himself, but to Job! Yet we all need to learn it about ourselves. The New Testament supplies the answer to this serious question. Man can be righteous before God, but only through faith in the Lord Jesus who has suffered for our sins. Righteousness is not ours by nature; it is credited to believers only because of their faith in Christ (Rom. 4:20-24).