Job 25

Then Bildad, the man from Shuah, answered Job. He said:

1Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,

NoteBildad is the second of Job's three friends, and this is the third and last time he speaks. Shuah was probably a region east of Israel; the friends are all foreigners, not Israelites. This speech is unusually short, only five verses, and Bildad never speaks again.

2Rule and awe belong to God. He keeps order and peace in the heights above.

2Dominion and fear are with him, he maketh peace in his high places.

Note"His high places" means the heights of the sky, God's own domain. The phrase translated "makes peace" carries the sense of imposing order or settling conflict, and ancient readers would have heard it against the background of stories in which the heavens themselves contain restless powers that must be kept in their place.

3Can anyone count his armies? Is there anyone his light does not shine on?

3Is there any number of his armies? and upon whom doth not his light arise?

Note"His armies" translates a word for organized troops. In Hebrew the sky's contents (stars, and the heavenly beings imagined alongside them) are regularly described as God's army or host, which is why the same phrase can be translated "the hosts of heaven."

4So how can a human being be counted right in God's eyes? How can anyone born of a woman be clean?

4How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?

Note"Justified" is courtroom language, not moral language: it means to be declared in the right when a case is decided, to win the argument. Bildad is answering Job's repeated demand for a hearing before God. "Born of a woman" is a standard Hebrew way of saying "human being," with the added sense of being frail and short-lived.

5Look, even the moon is not bright to him, and the stars are not pure in his sight.

5Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

NoteThe point is comparison, not astronomy: set beside God, even the brightest things in the night sky count as dim and unclean. "Pure" and "clean" here belong to the vocabulary of ritual purity (fit to come near what is holy), rather than to the modern idea of being morally good.

6How much less a human being, who is only a maggot, and a child of Adam, who is only a worm.

6How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?

NoteThe two words are different in Hebrew. The first is the maggot that breeds in decaying flesh; the second is a worm or grub, also the word for the creature crushed to make crimson dye. Both are images of something small, soft and disposable. "Son of man" is the ordinary Hebrew phrase for a human being, literally "child of Adam," and "adam" is also the word for humankind and echoes the word for the ground a person is made from.