Job 25:1

Then answered Bildad Who makes the last weak effort against Job; and being unable to deny the truth of his assertions, but at the same time unwilling to give up the argument, shelters himself behind the acknowledged attributes of God, power, justice, and purity, and the infirmities of human nature. Probably he and the rest of Job's friends now perceived that Job and they did not differ so much as they had thought. They owned that the wicked might prosper for a while; and Job owned they would be destroyed at the last. As to the point of bringing Job to confess himself guilty of some enormous crimes, which they at first rashly supposed had drawn this heavy judgment upon him, that is completely given up, and Bildad satisfies himself with an evasive answer to what Job had observed on that head, 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; an argument which concerned Job no more than themselves, but equally involved them all in the same class of sinners. This answer has no reference to what Job spake last, but to that which seemed most reproveable in all his discourses, his censure of God's proceedings with him, and his desire of disputing the matter with him. Bildad's sentiments are extremely good and pious, but they are but little to the purpose, since he is now reduced to advance what Job had never disputed. “As we here take our leave,” says Dr. Dodd, “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 shows 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.”