As if answering Job's doubts, Bildad again reminds him that the ways of God...
As if answering Job's doubts, Bildad again reminds him that the ways of God are inscrutable, and that no one is pure before Him (vv. 1-6). Such an answer, as one can easily guess, only added fuel to the fire of the doubts and torments that troubled Job. He wanted answers, wanted the certainty he had had before and had now lost; Bildad's answer only increased the uncertainty. Of course, for a religious person such uncertainty often even has its appeal. This is not surprising: religious consciousness is always to a certain degree abstract. The God of religion is usually not the living God, but a scheme, an abstraction, a speculation. Religiosity was born not from the experience of revelation, but from speculation; at its foundation lies not so much communion with God as theology.
Of course, the experience of revelation was often clothed in religious forms, but it nevertheless always remained in a certain sense alien to religion. For a person seeking a meeting with the living God, God's incomprehensibility is the main problem: until God Himself throws a bridge across the abyss that separates Him from human beings, no communion with God will be possible. For a religious person, however, such incomprehensibility does not constitute a problem at all. On the contrary, it even leaves a certain space for reflections about God, for suppositions, guesses, and theological concepts. Religion, of course, also presupposes relations with God, but at a safe distance, from which it is almost impossible to discern God. That is why religiosity presupposes a certain speculative and conventional image of God: religion rarely brings a person into direct communion with God.
And for this reason the religious person is inwardly ready to accept that he will know less about God than he could. In exchange for refusing to draw near to God, religion gives him certain guarantees of safety on condition that he observe certain norms and rules that will allow him to maintain relations with God at a safe distance. But in that case, of course, the religious person can no longer claim to know the ways of God. And Bildad, repeating the well-known words about the inscrutability of God's ways, is in essence offering Job the chance to give up seeking God and limit himself to what religion can give him.
25 Bildad teaches us, to think highly and honourably of God, and to think meanly of ourselves, Job 25:1-6.
25:1 Answered - Not to that which Job spake last, but to that which seemed most reprovable in all his discourses; his censure of God's proceedings with him, and his desire of disputing the matter with him. Perhaps Bildad and the rest now perceived that Job and they did not differ so much as they thought. They owned that the wicked might prosper for a while. And Job owned, they would be destroyed at the last.
25:2 Dominion - Sovereign power over all persons and things.Fear - Terror, that which justly makes him dreadful to all men, and especially to all that undertake to dispute with him. He - This clause, as well as the following verse, seems to be added to prove God's dominion and dreadfulness: he keepeth and ruleth all persons and things in heaven, in peace and harmony. The angels, though they be very numerous, all own his sovereignty, and acquiesce in his pleasure.The stars, tho' vast in their bulk, and various in their motions: exactly keep the order which God hath appointed them: and therefore it is great folly for thee to quarrel with the methods of God's dealings with thee.
25:3 Armies - Of the angels, and stars, and other creatures, all which are his hosts. Light - The light of the sun is communicated to all parts of the world. This is a faint resemblance, of the cognisance and care which God takes of the whole creation. All are under the light of his knowledge: all partake of the light of his goodness: his pleasure is to shew mercy: all the creatures live upon his bounty.
25:4 Man - The word signifies man that is miserable, which supposes him to be sinful; and shall such a creature quarrel with that dominion of God, to which the sinless, and happy, and glorious angels submit?God - Before God's tribunal, to which thou dost so boldly appeal.
25:5 Moon - The moon, tho' bright and glorious, if compared with the Divine Majesty, is without any lustre or glory. By naming the moon, and thence proceeding to the stars, the sun is also included.
25:6 Worm - Mean, and vile, and impotent; proceeding from corruption, and returning to it. The son - For miserable man in the last branch he here puts the son of any man, to shew that this is true even of the greatest and best of men. Let us then wonder at the condescension of God, in taking such worms into covenant and communion with himself!