How much less man, who is a maggot, And a son of man, who is a worm?” Job 25:6
Bildad Denies That Man Can Be Justified with God
Bildad will not respond to Job’s argument, nor join him in his questioning. Instead Bildad simply insists that God must be right, and that man has no right to question.
Bildad’s brief speech concludes the sayings of Job’s friends. Bildad holds that God established order in the material and moral universe. As he shines brighter than any creation material, man in comparison is a moral worm. So all Job’s claims of purity are meaningless!
Man a maggot? (25:6) For some, it’s a theological teeter-totter. If God is to be exalted, man must be degraded. But as Job saw, this is terribly wrong. Yet only in Christ do we realize how wrong Bildad was. Christ chose to become a real human being, “made a little lower than the angels,” but raised again to bring “many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:9-10). God’s love for us proves man is no maggot. Love marks us out as beings of infinite worth.
Bildad’s view of God’s dominion and majesty in the heavens causes him to devalue mortal man as maggot. He responds insensitively to Job by suggesting that Job does not need to wait until he dies to be grouped with maggots (the same Hebrew word that Job used in 17:14). This was caustic sarcasm, for Job was in fact covered with worms (see 7:5).
My flesh is caked with worms and dust, My skin is cracked and breaks out afresh. Job 7:5
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Hebrew 2:9-10
