Bildad's Third Speech: A Mortal cannot hope to be right with God [Job 25] & Job's reply to Bildad: The difference between religion and wisdom [Job26]: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross

Bildad’s Third Speech: A Mortal cannot hope to be right with God [Job 25] & Job’s reply to Bildad: The Difference between religion and wisdom [Job 26]:

{Pray}

BILDAD’S THIRD SPEECH is the last we hear of any of the three comforters. Although some scholars say it is “far too short,” this is a purely subjective judgment. They often add in other passages, notably 26:5–14, to fill it out. But we have no manuscript support for this rearrangement. Indeed the shortness of Bildad’s speech (and the absence of any word from Zophar) points up nicely the bankruptcy of the comforters. They stutter into silence, beaten by Job’s perseverance, integrity, and faith.

In this final word Bildad reiterates one point (v. 4) that has been eloquently made already by Eliphaz twice (4:17; 15:14–16). He prefaces this point by praising God for his sovereignty (vv. 2, 3) and follows it by praising God for his purity (vv. 5, 6).

The Sovereignty of God (vv. 1-3)

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

“Dominion and fear are with God;

he makes peace in his high heaven.

Is there any number to his armies?

Upon whom does his light not arise?” (vv. 1–3)

The word “fear” in verse 2a has the sense of awe or “reverence.” God is so great that he has won the absolute victory over the highest powers in the heavens, thus making “peace” (v. 2b). He has countless heavenly warriors in his “armies” (v. 3a, as in the title “The Lord of hosts,” used many times in the Old Testament), and the “light” of his omnipresent greatness is everywhere (v. 3b). There is no dark corner of the universe where he does not rule. In Bildad’s mind we ought therefore to bow in reverence and awe before him rather than seeking to be justified in his presence because....

Human Beings Cannot Be Justified before God (v. 4)

How then can man be in the right before God?

How can he who is born of woman be pure? (v. 4)

Repeating what Eliphaz has said before, Bildad’s central point is that Job’s desire and hope to stand before God face-to-face is absurd and arrogant. The word for “man” (enosh) and the phrase “born of woman” emphasize human frailty and mortality. It is not possible for impure human beings to stand “pure” and clean “before God.”

Job has come close to admitting this, twice. He has asked, “How can a man be in the right before God?” (9:2), and he has reasoned, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one” (14:4). And yet he clings in hope to the belief that there will be for him a mediator who will stand for him in Heaven and enable him to be justified before God.

The Purity of God (vv. 5, 6)

Behold, even the moon is not bright,

and the stars are not pure in his eyes;

how much less man, who is a maggot,

and the son of man, who is a worm! (vv. 5, 6)

Bildad contrasts the pure shining light of the Middle-Eastern “moon” and “stars” with the dirtiness of mortals, who have about them the smell of death, like maggots and worms (v. 5). Far from seeing man as “a little lower than the heavenly beings” (Psalm 8:5), he regards humans as little better than maggots.

Bildad thus reiterates the denial of grace and unbelief that there could be a heavenly mediator and prefigures those whose enemy is the cross of Christ. It is his final word, and a tragic mistake.

Job’s Reply to Bildad: The Difference between Religion and Wisdom (Job 26)

ONE OF THE MOST interesting observations about the cycles of speeches is that Job is inconsistent, whereas his friends are essentially consistent. Sure, their tone shifts from the sympathetic (especially Eliphaz in his first speech) to the downright brutal. But their theological system is intact, as tidy and precise at the end as it was at the beginning. Job, however, is not at all consistent.

He begins by taking their system for granted; this is his starting point, as it is theirs. But his understanding has been shaken to the core by his experience of undeserved suffering. His speeches lament his pain, and they rage with pathetic frustration at the God he cannot understand. And then gradually, so gradually, his longing for the heavenly mediator becomes clearer (9:33–35; 16:18, 19; 19:25–27). So in the end the inconsistency of Job is wiser than the consistency of his friends. It is an inconsistency of integrity and faith.

This is one of the reasons why many scholars find chapters 24–27 so difficult. They expect Job to be consistent, like his friends; so when they find him saying things that they do not expect him to say, and that he has not said earlier, they assume the text has been dislocated and assign these sections to others. But it seems that toward the end of the cycles Job begins to grasp some deep truths and indeed to teach them to his friends. Job’s speeches have a prophetic character (James 5:10, 11); so it should not surprise us to find in them pointers to the wisdom of God.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Any of us should know, if we have grown as Christians, throughout our walk with the Lord He has revealed to us things that would have changed our position on ideas or beliefs…i.e. we my not hold the same view on certain things as we grow in the Lord. I am not the same pastor today that I was nine years ago. It’s not necessarily inconsistency as it is growing in the Lord.

Although chapters 26, 27 are both spoken by Job, they are separate speeches and are differently introduced. Chapter 26 is introduced in the same way as all the speeches in the three cycles, with the words, “Then Job answered and said …” But chapter 27 is introduced with the words, “And Job again took up his discourse, and said …” So we will consider these speeches separately rather than lumping them together.

Chapter 26 is Job’s final answer to Bildad. In it Job speaks as a teacher. He says one negative truth (a rebuke) and two positive truths. The negative (vv. 1–4) is that the friends’ theological system offers no saving wisdom. The two positives are, first, that real wisdom is to be found in God’s absolute sovereignty, even above the order of creation (vv. 5–13), and finally that God has an even deeper wisdom (v. 14).

The System of the world Offers No Saving Wisdom (vv. 1–4)

Then Job answered and said:

“How you have helped him who has no power!

How you have saved the arm that has no strength!

How you have counseled him who has no wisdom,

and plentifully declared sound knowledge!

With whose help have you uttered words,

and whose breath has come out from you?” (vv. 1–4)

Job begins with biting sarcasm. He has already lamented that when the friends die, there will be no wisdom left in the world (12:2)! More explicitly, he has said that there is not a wise man among them (17:10). Now he takes sarcasm to new heights. He says in essence, “I am so grateful that I, who am powerless and weak, have found such lifesaving help and salvation from your lips [v. 2], that I, who have no wisdom and never say anything right, have been privileged to listen to your plentiful, health-giving [‘sound’] ‘knowledge’ [v. 3]! What a lucky man I am! But just tell me from where you obtained such saving wisdom [v. 4]. Someone wonderful must have helped you. You must have been inspired by some wonderful ‘spirit,’ v. 4]!”

It is almost as if Job posts on Facebook, “Just been listening to eight wonderful speeches from the wisest men on earth. I’ve been having some difficulties and sadnesses recently, and they’ve really helped me so much. Not!”

The key point is to note that the words for wisdom (“wisdom,” v. 3a; “knowledge,” v. 3b; “words,” v. 4a) are—or ought to be—linked with words for salvation (“helped,” v. 2a; “saved,” v. 2b). The true wisdom of God the Savior will not only instruct but actually help and rescue the suffering and the needy. The proof that the theological system of the comforters is bankrupt is precisely that it has no power to save. Human religion and philosophy has never had power to save, and it never will. Only the message of the cross, which undergirds the messages of undeserved suffering and unmerited grace, has the power to help the helpless.

True Wisdom Is Found in the Absolute Sovereignty of God, Even over Creation Order (vv. 5–13)

Job now launches into a powerful and beautiful hymn of praise to God the Creator. There are similarities between this and what the friends have sometimes said (which is why, for example, Habel adds verses 5–14 to Bildad’s short speech in chapter 25). But we will see that Job actually praises God for something that lies outside the theological tidiness of The comforters System.

God Is Sovereign over Death (vv. 5, 6)

The dead tremble

under the waters and their inhabitants.

Sheol is naked before God,

and A-bad-don has no covering. (vv. 5, 6)

Job begins with the lowest extreme of creation. In the deep, “under the waters” of the deepest sea, lies “Sheol,” the place of the dead (vv. 5, 6). “A-bad-don” (v. 6) means “Destruction” and in Greek later was translated “Apollyon,” who is “the angel of the bottomless pit” (Revelation 9:11). The parallel of “Sheol” and “A-bad-don” in verse 6 speaks both of the place of the dead and the supernatural spiritual power who stands guard over that place. A-bad-don will reappear in 28:22. In this place are “the dead” (v. 5a). Literally this is “the Rephaim.” This word can refer to supernaturally strong human beings (as in Genesis 14:5; 15:20), but the context here suggests that the translation “the dead” for Sheol and A-bad-don is correct; the word conjures up shadowy images of the shades, ghostly figures wandering around Sheol.

In the three references to “the dead,” “Sheol,” and “A-bad-don” there is a crescendo. Dead people cannot escape the sovereignty of God. The realm of the dead provides no protection from the searching eyes of God. And, climactically, the supernatural power guarding this prison “has no covering” before the eyes of God (v. 6). The point would seem to be that God’s sovereignty extends to the dead, the realm of the dead, and the guardian of the realm of the dead. There is no second god, no evil supernatural power who has an independent existence or realm where he or it can escape the searching presence of God. God’s sovereignty is absolute!

God Maintains the Created Order (vv. 7–10)

He stretches out the north over the void

and hangs the earth on nothing.

He binds up the waters in his thick clouds,

and the cloud is not split open under them.

He covers the face of the full moon

and spreads over it his cloud.

He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters

at the boundary between light and darkness. (vv. 7–10)

Job now moves from under the sea to over the ground. The governing idea in verses 7–10 is the creation as a place of order. The reference to “the north” (Hebrew zaphon) in verse 7 is probably to Mount Zaphon, the cosmic mountain or the mountain of the gods in ancient religious thought. This very high mountain was where the gods and goddesses dwelt, rather like Mount Olympus in Greek mythology in later centuries. Isaiah describes the pride of the King of Babylon in these terms: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north [zaphon]’ ” (Isaiah 14:13).

The Old Testament takes this polytheistic language and appropriates it to describe the sovereignty of the one true God. So Psalm 48:2 describes Mount Zion as being “in the far north [zaphon],” which it is not geographically, but it is theologically; it is the place from which the one true God governs the world. In verse 7 “the north” is presented in parallel with “the earth,” which suggests that “the north” is the equivalent of “the heavens” (as in the usual pairing of the heavens and the earth). God “stretches out” (as a builder) both the high and heavenly part of creation (“the north”) and the low and earthly part. And he does so “over the void” or “on nothing,” a pair of images that remind us of the state of the earth before Genesis 1 (“without form and void,” Genesis 1:2).

So Genesis 1 is in our minds as we read this hymn of praise. Verse 8 reminds us that in the poetic cosmology of Genesis 1 there are waters above the ceiling or firmament of the sky, and these waters are kept up there. As verse 8 puts it, in spite of the great weight of these waters, the clouds form a barrier, and only some waters get through. It is a lovely, vivid picture—the clouds holding up the waters and not splitting. In our idiom a split cloud would give a cloudburst. In the language of Genesis 6–8, ultimately burst clouds will lead to a flood of chaotic waters that would destroy the earth. But God prevents this. He maintains order.

In verse 9 “the full moon” can be translated “his throne” (by different vocalization), in which case the reference to being covered by clouds may be about the inaccessibility of the throne of God.

In verse 10 “circle” is literally a “limit” or “statute” (choq). It refers to the horizon, in the poetic sense of a circle that limits the extent of the sea. In this sense it divides “light” (the dry ground, the place of order) from “darkness” (the sea, the place of chaos and danger). Personified Wisdom speaks poetically of this in Proverbs: “When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep …” (Proverbs 8:27).

The overall picture, reminiscent of Genesis 1, is of creation as a place of order and boundaries, upheld by the power of God. But now there is a surprise.

God Shakes the Created Order When He So Chooses (v. 11)

The pillars of heaven tremble

and are astounded at his rebuke. (v. 11)

In Old Testament poetic cosmology, “the pillars of heaven” are the distant mountains on which the firmament or platform of Heaven rests. These solid mountains are like pillars holding up the firmament, which in turn protects the earth from being destroyed by a flood. But here, after the reassuring language of creation order in verses 7–10, the Creator’s “rebuke” actually shakes the creation order!

We imagine the Creator speaking in judgment and the most solid parts of creation shaking in terror. The point is that The System of the comforters is not God. Yes, there is creation order, but creation order is not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is the Sovereign God who can and does shake the ordered predictability of creation when he so chooses. But why? Verses 12, 13 give us a hint.

It Is Only by Shaking the Created Order That He Will Subdue Evil (vv. 12, 13)

By his power he stilled the sea;

by his understanding he shattered Rahab.

By his wind the heavens were made fair;

his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. (vv. 12, 13)

These verses speak, in storybook language that would be recognized all over the ancient Near East, of the conquest and subjugation of supernatural evil. “The sea” is a picture of all the forces of chaos and disorder that threaten to swamp the moral order of creation with injustice (v. 12).

“Rahab” (v. 12), also called “the fleeing serpent” (v. 13), is a storybook name for the gigantic sea monster or sea serpent that lives in the sea and embodies all the anti-God forces of evil in the universe. We meet this “fleeing” [or possibly “gliding”] serpent” in Isaiah 27, where we meet Rahab’s other name, Leviathan: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1). We will meet this monster again in chapter 41.

The voice of God that rebukes “the pillars” (v. 11) now blows as a “wind” (or “breath,” “spirit”) to subdue the chaotic waters (“stilled the sea” [v. 12]) and to end the storms of moral disorder (“the heavens were made fair” [v. 13]) by subduing cosmic evil.

In all this Job understands that the sovereignty of God does not simply mean the upholding of moral order in creation, as the comforters believe. He has grasped that the problem and threat of evil is of such a magnitude that its destruction will involve a shaking that goes to the core of creation, a shaking that is embodied and anticipated in his own innocent sufferings, a shaking that will finally be fulfilled only when the earth quakes at the cross of Jesus Christ and there is darkness at noon. Shaking the Created Order That Subdued Evil. Job sees this only hazily, of course, but this is the prophetic logic of his words.

Because Job is reaching out in faith for a truth that lies beyond his grasp (like the prophets in 1 Peter 1:10–12), he concludes by affirming that there is a wisdom of God deeper than anything that can be discerned by observation of creation and providence.

God Has an Even Deeper Wisdom (v. 14)

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways,

and how small a whisper do we hear of him!

But the thunder of his power who can understand? (v. 14)

The phrase “his ways” in the context of creation language means more than just God’s actions; it refers to the structures or laws of the cosmic order, to “a law or principle of God’s cosmic design.” The hymn has ranged from the realm of the dead below to the upholding of the firmament of Heaven above and to the subjugation of cosmic evil. It is not narrow in its scope! And yet it describes only “the outskirts of his ways”; it is no more than “a whisper” of God in the fullness of his wisdom and “power.” There is something more. There is, as we have the privilege of knowing now, the wisdom and power of the cross of Christ, which is both wiser and more powerful than all human wisdom and power (1 Corinthians 1:18–31).

Putting Job’s argument together we can see how it answers Bildad and his friends. They have a tidy theological and cosmic system, in which creation order is undisturbed and invulnerable. This system has no power to save because it has no place for the subjugation of evil, no way to conquer evil.

Evil can, and will, only be defeated by a wisdom that comes from the God who is sovereign over Sheol, A-bad-don, and the serpent; it is a wisdom as yet, in Job’s day, unrevealed, but a wisdom that will finally be made known in the wisdom of the cross of Christ. Job speaks well, and he speaks more truly than he knows. It is a fine and final answer to Bildad.

In commenting on this passage I like what Matthew Henry said, “Many striking instances are here given of the wisdom and power of God, in the creation and preservation of the world. If we look about us, to the earth and waters here below, we see his almighty power. If we consider hell beneath, though out of our sight, yet we may conceive the discoveries of God’s power there. If we look up to heaven above, we see displays of God’s almighty power. By his Spirit, the eternal Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters, the breath of his mouth, Ps 33:6, he has not only made the heavens, but beautified them. By redemption, all the other wonderful works of the Lord are eclipsed; and we may draw near, and taste his grace, learn to love him, and walk with delight in his ways.”

Let us delight in all His ways.