Jobchapter 25
6 verses · BSBJob book hub →
Speaks with:Colossians 1×1Revelation 6×1Ephesians 1×1James 1×1Matthew 5×1Psalms 19×1
Summary
Chapter summary
Bildad's third speech, six verses, and the friends' case has nothing left. He begins where right theology begins: 'Dominion and fear are with him; he maketh peace in his high places. Is there any number of his armies?' Then the old question one final time: 'How then can man be just with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?' (25:4). Even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in his sight; how much less man, that is a worm. It is true and it is useless (majesty with no door in it) and after this the three fall silent.
The outline
A.Bildad's Last Word: How Then Can Man Be Just With God?vv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →
The world behind this chapter
Job 25The history
Six verses, and then the friends never speak again. Bildad has no new material, so he falls back on the one point nobody disputes: God is so great that no man can be clean before him.
He opens with the heavenly court. Dominion and fear are with him; he makes peace in his high places; is there any number of his armies? The armies are the host of heaven, the same assembly that appeared in chapter 1 — and Bildad, without knowing it, is pointing at the room where Job's case was actually opened.
'Doth not his light arise?' and the moon and the stars being not pure in his sight use the brightest things anyone could see as the measuring stick. If the clean lights of the sky are dim next to God, what is a man?
His answer is deliberately degrading: man is a worm, and the son of man a maggot. The Hebrew words name the grub that breeds in decay — the creature of the corpse and the dung heap. He is looking at a man sitting on an ash mound covered in sores and calling him what he appears to be.
What it meant to them
The collapse is the message. Three men came a long way with a complete explanation of the universe, and the last of them can only repeat that God is big and Job is small, and then stop.
First hearers were meant to hear the silence that follows. When the third friend runs dry with the sufferer still sitting there in the ashes, the whole system has been answered.
Sources cited
- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 25. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.