Bildad’s first speech
8
📚Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,2 📚“How long will you speak these things? And how long will the words of your mouth be like a strong wind?
8:1-2 Bildad thinks Job is very reckless and impious in his words. In the speech which follows he shows he is in full agreement with Eliphaz.⚜
3 📚Does God pervert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice?
8:3 He believes that Job is accusing God of injustice. This verse is the basis of all Bildad has to say – God is always working out justice in this world, rewarding the good, punishing the wicked. If disasters and suffering come to a man it is because he deserves them. For God would not punish a person unjustly. Bildad seems to think calamities and sufferings such as Job experienced could only be punishment for wrong doing. He does not understand that God may justly permit afflictions to come to a person to try him, to prove his faith and good character, and that he may allow the wicked to prosper all through life and judge and punish him after death. It is very true, of course, that God does not pervert justice. But it is impossible for men on earth, especially without the full revelation of the Bible, to understand how justice is being worked out.
All three friends of Job had very narrow, rigid, and simplistic views on the outworking of God’s justice. Therefore they were sometimes harsh and lacking in sympathy. In these days if we hold the view that everyone on earth is getting just what he deserves, or that if anyone suffers it is his karma being worked out, such a view might tend to make us somewhat unfeeling toward those in misery and suffering.⚜
4 📚If your children sinned against him and he cast them away for their transgression,
8:4 With Bildad’s views of justice being what they were, no doubt he believed that Job’s children had sinned terribly and been destroyed because of it.⚜
5 📚If you would seek God and make your supplication to the Almighty,
8:5 Job 5:8. Bildad apparently assumes with Eliphaz that Job had not done so.⚜
6 📚If you have been pure and upright, surely now he will awake for you, and restore your righteous dwelling place.
7 📚Though your beginning was small, yet in the end you will increase greatly.
8:6-7 Since Job was not destroyed with his children it is barely possible, Bildad thinks, that Job may not be unrighteous. In such case God will restore him to blessing and prosperity. This actually happened in the case of Job (Job 42:10-13). But in general it is not a principle that is valid in this world. Righteousness does not always result in prosperity and sinfulness does not always bring poverty. Prosperity is not necessarily a sign of God’s blessing and poverty is not necessarily a sign of God’s displeasure (see Ps 73:3, 12; Luke 6:20-26; 12:33-34; 16:19-31; 18:22; 1 Tim 6:6-9, 18, 19; Heb 10:32-37; Jam 5:1-6; 1 Pet 4:12-16).⚜
8 📚“For please ask the former age, and consider what was searched out by their fathers;
9 📚For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.
10 📚Will they not teach you, and tell you, and utter words from their heart?
8:8-10 Eliphaz claimed some kind of mystical inspiration for his remarks (Job 4:12-16). Bildad bases his remarks on tradition. He means that the views he and his friends express are not new and not merely their opinions; ancient wisdom taught the same thing. However, that which is called ancient wisdom is not necessarily wisdom, and sometimes is the opposite of wisdom.⚜
11 📚Can papyrus grow up without marsh? Can the reed grow without water?
12 📚While it is still green and not cut down, it withers before any other plant.
13 📚So are the paths of all who forget God, and the hypocrite’s 📖 hope will perish.
14 📚His hope will be cut off, and his trust will be a spider’s web.
15 📚He leans against his house, but it does not stand. He holds fast to it, but it does not endure.
16 📚He is green in the sunlight, and his branch spreads out in his garden.
17 📚His roots wrap around the rock heap, and sees the place of stones.
18 📚If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have not seen you.’
19 📚See, this is the joy of his way, and out of the earth others will grow.
8:11-19 The essence of what he says here is this: the wicked may be very prosperous for a little while but they will fall like withered plants. Bildad does not say Job is like the wicked people he describes, but he obviously suspects it. Why else would he use such illustrations? He meant them as a warning to Job.⚜
8:19 This could possibly be translated “See, all the joy it has is that from the soil other plants grow”.⚜
20 📚Consider, God will not cast away a blameless man, nor will he help evildoers.
8:20 Verse 3.⚜
21 📚He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with rejoicing.
22 📚Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the dwelling place of the wicked will come to nothing”.
8:21-22 He is saying that God will do this if Job is truly righteous and will plead with God (vs 5,6).⚜