Job 25 · a question people ask

Job asked the same question. Did he agree with Bildad?

In the text

Job asked it first: "Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?" (9:2). Job went straight on to a hearing with God: "If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand" (9:3), and "For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment" (9:32). He also said, "Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me" (9:20), and later, "See now, I have set my cause in order. I know that I am righteous" (13:18); in Hebrew righteous in both is the verb of 25:4's be just (tap just). In his last answer before this chapter he said, "Oh that I knew where I might find him! That I might come even to his seat!" (23:3), and "There the upright might reason with him, so I should be delivered forever from my judge" (23:7). Bildad asks the question and goes on to the moon, the stars and the worm (25:5-6). The two ask it with the same words, and the chapters around them show where each goes next. These notes don't say more than that about what either man meant.

The verses

““Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God? If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.”
Job 9:2-3 · World English Bible
“Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.”
Job 9:20 · World English Bible
“For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.”
Job 9:32 · World English Bible
“See now, I have set my cause in order. I know that I am righteous.”
Job 13:18 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Job 25

Job 25: How can man be just with God?

Bildad's "How then can man be just with God?" (25:4) is Job's own question from chapter 9 in the same five Hebrew words (9:2). And his "man, who is a worm" (25:6) uses two different Hebrew words for worm, which stand together in only one other verse of the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 14:11.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions