Scripture Daily

Context No. 780 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 25:1-6: in context

1Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, 2“Dominion and fear are with him. He makes peace in his high places. 3Can his armies be counted? On whom does his light not arise? 4How then can man be just with God? Or how can he who is born of a woman be clean? 5Behold, even the moon has no brightness, and the stars are not pure in his sight; 6How much less man, who is a worm, and the son of man, who is a worm!”

Bildad's last speech is the shortest in the book, just a handful of verses, and you can feel the friends running out of things to say. He begins with something true and even grand about God: dominion and awe belong to him, he makes peace in his high heavens, his armies beyond counting, his light falling on everyone. And from that height he asks the question the friends keep circling. How then can a man be righteous before God, or one born of woman be clean? Even the moon is not bright in his eyes, he says, and the stars are not pure; how much less a human being, a maggot, a son of man who is only a worm.

The premise is not wrong. Before the holiness of God, no one stands clean on his own; next to that light even the moon dims. But watch what Bildad does with the truth. He does not use it to kneel beside Job in shared smallness; he uses it to grind Job into the dirt, to end the argument by declaring the man a worm. The same fact can be spoken two ways. As we are all small before God, it humbles and it comforts. As you are a maggot, it crushes. Bildad reaches for a real truth and swings it as a club, and it is the last thing he ever manages to say. God will later tell these friends that they did not speak rightly of him at all.

Bildad took a true thing, that we are small before God, and used it to crush rather than to console. What truth have I wielded to belittle someone, when the very same truth, spoken gently, might have humbled us both together?

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