Bildad's Last Words (Job 25)
Bill Long 2/14/05
The brevity of this chapter (the shortest in the Book of Job) gives me an opportunity to discuss the third cycle of speeches as well as the content of this speech. Job 25 will record the last words of the friends. Instead of ending with a "bang," as Job does in Job 31, the friends go out with a "whimper." The last thought Bildad utters is that humans are "maggots" and "worms": fitting last words for friends whose store of mental conceptions has been exhausted through the bruising talk with Job.
The Third Cycle
The major question to pose about this incomplete cycle is why the friends stop speaking. Have they said all that they wanted? Has Job, as it were, cut them off? Have they become stymied by Job's words and arguments? Is it a sign that the conversation can go no further? After I review the flow of the third cycle, take a stab at one of these questions.
The third cycle begins with Job 21. No one is sure where it ends. Some think that it ends in Job 27, some at Job 31. In any case it is not as "clean" as the first two cycles. It starts promisingly enough, from a literary perspective. Eliphaz speaks in ch.22, Job in chs.23-24 and Bildad responds in ch.25. Then Job speaks in ch.26. But here is the problem. Bildad's speech in ch.25 seems truncated; it is only six verses; Job's speech in ch.26 seems to include lots of material that isn't appropriate in his mouth, at least as we read his earlier words about God; and Zophar doesn't have a third speech. Then, there is the problem whether we look at Job 27 as Job's "last speech" of the cycle or whether ch.28 is spoken by Job. Chs.29-31 function as a great oath of innocence before Job signs his complaint at the end of 31.
Faced with these problems scholars have done everything from following the text as we have received it from the Masoretes in the Middle Ages (my approach) to "rewriting" and "rearranging" the text so that Zophar has a third speech and Job's response to Bildad is shorter--cobbled together from some verses in chs.24 and 26. Even some translations of the Bible, such as the Jerusalem Bible, put these literary theories into effect by rearranging the present text of Job. I will have none of it. My contention is that you should work with the text as you have it and try to make sense of it. The two theories that appeal to me most about the "incompleteness" of the third cycle are: (1) that Job's lines, especially in ch.24, are unanswerable by the friends--they don't have the capacity to handle these serious assaults on God's justice; and (2) the friends "talk past" each other, the conversation is at an end and the literary breakdown in these chapters is indicative of this fact. After thinking through the problem, what opinion, if any, do you have?
Bildad Finishes (Job 25)
1 "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered: 2 'Dominion and fear are with God; he makes peace in his high heaven. 3 Is there any number to his armies? Upon whom does his light not arise? 4 How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure? 5 If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his sight, 6 how much less a mortal, who is a maggot, and a human being, who is a worm!'"
A. Bildad only has two ideas in this section. What are they? Are they ideas that you have seen previously in the Book of Job or are they new ideas?
B. We can divide his remarks, at least for our purposes, into 1-3 and 4-6. His reference to the innumerability of God's armies seems to echo Job's lament in 19:12 about God's troops attacking him (the same word for troops is used). If Bildad was responding to Job's use of the term, what is he trying to suggest?
C. Light and darkness have been prevalent themes in the Book of Job. Does Bildad's reference in v.3 add anything to the mix?
D. The last three verses echo a theme first articulated by Eliphaz. Read Job 4:17-19 and compare it with these verses. Has Bildad advanced the thought at all? Compare these verses also to Eliphaz's second speech, in Job 15:14-16. Similar or different?
E. The word translated "maggot" in v.6 is only used seven times in the Bible (and "worm" is used less often). Five of the seven appearances of "maggot" are in Job. Job actually uses the term three times in his previous three speeches. Check the references: 17:14, 21:26; 24:20 (it can be translated "worm"). In what ways does Job use the word? Does Bildad's use of the word "worm" and "maggot" give us any insight into the workings of his mind?
Concluding Thought
The friends are the ones who seem to have run out of things to say, but ironically they are the ones with the "proven" theology. The wisdom theology they espouse has been tried and tested through generations of reflection on life. And the wisdom theology, it seems to me, is pretty representative of what we might call an unofficial "American theology." How so? Or, if you disagree with me, how not? Sometimes when people stubbornly cling to their position on something the best thing we can do is just to "give up" and realize that time will probably soften, or at least change, a person better than we can. Do you therefore think that the friends stop speaking because they realize it is fruitless to continue? So, who is the "victor" at this point, if that is an appropriate word? What effect has Job had on the friends? Are they disgusted? Bested? Stunned? Could they have regrouped shortly after Bildad's last speech and said, with conviction, "Well, we really told him!?"
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long
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