Job Chapter 25
Bildad’s Final Speech
A. Bildad muses upon the greatness of God.
1. (Job 25:1) Bildad’s final speech.
“Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,”
This brief introduction marks the final contribution of Job’s three friends to the debate. Bildad speaks last, and his speech is strikingly short. The abruptness itself is meaningful. The friends have exhausted their arguments. They have failed to move Job, and Job has effectively dismantled their rigid theology by exposing its inability to account for righteous suffering.
Some have suggested that the brevity of Bildad’s words or the placement of surrounding material indicates textual confusion, but there is no compelling reason to assume corruption of the text. Rather, the shortness of Bildad’s speech reflects the collapse of the dialogue. The debate has run out of momentum. Bildad has nothing new to offer, and what he does say merely repeats familiar themes.
The discussion has reached an impasse. Job has not accepted their accusations, and they cannot answer Job’s observations about the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous. As a result, the formal structure of the three debate cycles breaks down. Zophar does not speak again at all, and Bildad’s contribution is reduced to a final, compressed assertion of divine greatness. This marks a transition in the book from dialogue to monologue, as Job will soon speak at length without interruption.
2. (Job 25:2–3) The greatness of God.
“Dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace in his high places.
Is there any number of his armies? and upon whom doth not his light arise?”
Bildad’s final words focus entirely on the transcendence and supremacy of God. He affirms that dominion belongs to God alone. God rules absolutely, and fear properly belongs to Him. This fear is not merely terror, but awe rooted in His unmatched authority. Bildad emphasizes that God establishes peace in His high places, suggesting that even the heavenly realms are ordered and governed by His sovereign will.
By asking whether God’s armies can be numbered, Bildad draws attention to the vastness of God’s power. These armies include the heavenly host, angels, stars, and all created forces that operate under God’s command. The rhetorical question expects a negative answer. God’s resources are limitless, His power immeasurable, and His reach universal. There is no place where His light does not rise. Nothing exists outside His knowledge, authority, or presence.
Yet this appeal to divine greatness adds nothing new to the discussion. Job has never denied God’s sovereignty, power, or majesty. In fact, Job has repeatedly affirmed these truths, often more eloquently than his friends. Bildad’s problem is not doctrinal error, but pastoral failure. He uses God’s greatness as a blunt instrument rather than a source of comfort or explanation.
Implicitly, Bildad suggests that Job’s only reasonable response is submission without question. God is too great to be challenged, too powerful to be questioned, and too vast to be reasoned with. But Job’s struggle has never been about denying God’s greatness. It has been about understanding how such a great and just God governs a world where injustice appears unchecked and righteousness is afflicted. Bildad answers a question Job is not asking and ignores the question Job cannot escape.
The speech ends without resolution. There is no accusation, no exhortation, and no comfort, only a restatement of truths already acknowledged. Bildad falls silent because he has nothing left to say. The friends’ theology has reached its limit, and it cannot carry them any further.
B. Man in light of the greatness of God.
1. (Job 25:4) The question stated.
“How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?”
Bildad concludes his final speech by posing a question that, in itself, is entirely orthodox and true. He asks how any man can be righteous before God and how one born of a woman can be pure. This is not a new issue in the dialogue. Job himself had already acknowledged this reality earlier when he said in Job 9:2, “I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God?” Bildad is therefore not correcting Job, but restating a truth Job has never denied.
The problem is not the doctrine but the motive and application. Bildad raises the question not to drive Job toward grace, humility, or trust in God, but to press Job into a forced confession of guilt that Job does not possess. Bildad assumes that because all men are sinners by nature, Job’s suffering must therefore be the result of personal, unconfessed wickedness. He collapses the universal problem of sin into a specific accusation against Job.
By emphasizing that man is “born of a woman,” Bildad points to humanity’s natural weakness, frailty, and impurity. The phrase highlights human mortality and fallenness, not merely physical birth but moral limitation. Bildad’s aim is to make Job feel small, unworthy, and incapable of standing before God, thereby silencing Job’s desire to reason with Him.
2. (Job 25:5–6) Man’s relative smallness compared to creation.
“Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.
How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?”
Bildad now turns to creation to reinforce his point. He argues that if even the moon and stars, objects of great beauty and glory to human eyes, fall short of God’s holiness, then man stands infinitely lower. Compared to the Creator, even the brightest parts of creation are inadequate reflections of divine purity. This is a true observation in itself. Creation, though glorious, is not morally pure or equal to God in holiness.
However, Bildad presses this truth to an extreme that strips humanity of dignity. He describes man as a worm, a maggot, something vile, weak, and contemptible. His language is deliberately demeaning. The intent is not to humble Job before a gracious God, but to crush him beneath the weight of divine transcendence. Bildad leaves no room for mercy, mediation, or covenant relationship.
There is deep irony here. Bildad and his companions, who are themselves “worms” by their own description, have shown no hesitation in judging Job, condemning him, and speaking with moral superiority. They reduce humanity to insignificance, yet elevate their own opinions as authoritative and final. Their theology humbles man before God but exalts man over man.
Unlike later biblical teaching, this emphasis on human smallness is not used to prepare the way for grace. The apostle Paul would later establish human depravity in order to magnify justification by faith and the mercy of God. Bildad does the opposite. He emphasizes depravity without offering hope. His theology has no redeemer, no advocate, no mediator, and no restoration.
This is why Bildad’s speech ends on such a bleak note. There is no call to repentance grounded in mercy, no promise of forgiveness, no comfort for suffering, and no explanation of providence. Only distance, insignificance, and condemnation remain. The friends’ voices fall silent here because their theology has reached a dead end. They have nothing left to say that can help Job or explain his suffering.
