Bildad observes, that the dominion of God is supreme; that his armies are innumerable; and that no man can be just, compared with God.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 25:1. Then answered Bildad— The last weak effort against Job is made by Bildad. The three friends, finding themselves quite baffled in their purpose, which was, to make Job confess himself guilty of some enormous crimes, which they rashly supposed to have drawn this heavy judgment upon him; instead of ingenuously owning themselves in the wrong, which, if one may guess from the usual issue of disputes, is one of the hardest things in the world, this grave antagonist satisfies himself with an evasive answer to this purpose: namely, that no man, strictly speaking, can be justified before God; man being at best a frail and fallible creature, and God a Being of infinite purity and perfection: which is an argument that concerned Job no more than themselves, but must involve them all, without distinction, in the same class of sinners. As we here take our leave of the arguments urged by Job's friends, we may just observe in conclusion, that nothing could be more untoward than this conduct of theirs, to bring a charge against him which they could not prove, and from which his well-known virtue and integrity of life ought to have screened him. But, though Job very plainly shews them the injustice and inhumanity of this procedure, nay, though he confutes them so far that they had nothing to reply; yet, like modern disputants, they stood out to the last, and had not the grace to own their mistake, till God himself was pleased to thunder it in their ears. Here, then, we have a lively instance of the force of prejudice and prepossession.