May 9, 2024 - Job 25-28

A final speech, by Bildad, of the three friends.  All three friends have faced a conundrum.  Their arguments posit that either God or Job must be in  the wrong.  In this closing speech, an important question is asked several times:  “How then can man be in the right before God?  How can he who is born of woman be pure?” (25:4).  Job responds, a response I think that largely answers all the questions posed.  Chapter 26 – The mystery of God’s ways.  Job speaks of God’s mighty acts and concluded that there are some things that we simply cannot understand.  Chapter 27 – Job cannot agree that his suffering has come to him because of some great wickedness:  “I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for any of my days” (27:6).  Chapter 28 – Job acknowledges the value of wisdom and longs for the same that he might rightly understand his predicament.  Job’s speech, which is much longer than Bildad’s – I get the sense that Job is weary of his friends’ arguments and has determined to shut them up – and this section ends with “The words of Job are ended” (31:40).  But that wrap up will be for tomorrow.  But in answer to that first question (25:4), we must respond:

Lord, we are vile, and full of sin,

We're born unholy and unclean;

Spring from the man whose guilty fall

Corrupts his race, and taints us all.

Jesus, thy blood, thy blood alone,

Hath power sufficient to atone;

Thy blood can make us white as snow;

No other tide can cleanse us so.   –Isaac Watts (1740)