1 Then Bildad the Shuhite an swered:
2 His is dominion and awesome power,
he who establishes peace in the heavens.
3 Can his armies be numbered?
Upon whom does his light not rise?
4 How can man be righteous before God?
How can one born of woman be pure?
5 Even the moon is not bright
nor are the stars pure in his sight ¨C
6 how much less man ¨C this insect,
the human ¨C a worm?
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Comments Job, Chapter 25
• 25.1 Bildad offers a new presentation of the splendor of the world. The
people of that time still had very primitive ideas about the origin of the
world. They accepted the legends of neighboring people, the Canaanites and
the Chaldeans, that presented the universe as organized by the gods after
they had destroyed the monsters of chaos. For centuries, the Jews kept these
images; they were satisfied to re move from the legends the references to
pagan gods and spoke of a first victory of Yah weh at the beginning of the
world. See also Isaiah 51:9.
The first chapter of Genesis was written after these poems. There the notion
of God-Creator is purified: God created everything from the beginning and he
did so by his word alone.
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