How can a mortal be innocent before God? Can anyone born of a woman be pure?
Parallel translations
- WEB How then can man be just with God? Or how can he who is born of a woman be clean?
- KJV How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?
- BSB How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
- NKJV How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?
- NASB “How then can mankind be righteous with God? Or how can anyone who is born of woman be pure?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Bildad asks how any human born of woman can be righteous or clean before God. It matters because it raises the central question of how sinful man can be justified.
Overview
Bildad poses the profound question of how mortal man can be just or pure in God's sight. The question is right and important, exposing humanity's universal impurity before a holy God. The book of Job does not fully answer it, but the gospel does: sinners are justified not by their own cleanness but through Christ, who is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Rom 5:1Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
- Ps 130:3If you, Yah, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?
- Job 15:14–16What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
- Job 4:17–19‘Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?
- Job 9:2“Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
- Ps 143:2Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
- Rev 1:5and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood;
- Ps 51:5Behold, I was born in iniquity. In sin my mother conceived me.
- Zech 13:1“In that day there will be a spring opened to David’s house and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness.
- Job 14:3–4Do you open your eyes on such a one, and bring me into judgment with you?
- 1 Jn 1:9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
- Rom 3:19–20Now we know that whatever things the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God.
- Eph 2:3among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
- 1 Cor 6:11Such were some of you, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Job's cry for a mediator who can lay his hand on both God and man, and his confidence that 'my Redeemer lives' and will stand on the earth, reaches forward to Jesus the living Redeemer.
How Job 25:4 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.