Job 8:4

If thy children have sinned against him,.... As no doubt they had, and, as Bildad thought, in a very notorious manner, and therefore were righteously punished for them; this instance is produced as a

If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression; If - rather, "Since thy children have sinned against Him, and (since) He have cast them away for (Hebrew,

What though thou wast in a great measure innocent, thy children, upon whom a great part of these calamities fell, might be guilty of great sins; and therefore God is not unrighteous in these proceedings. He hath cast them away, expelled, or cast them out, (to wit, out of the world, or out of his favour; as a man gives his wife a bill of divorce, of which this word is used,) by means (Heb. by the hand, which is oft so used) of their wickedness. Or, hath left them in the hand of their sin, to wit, to be punished by it and for it. Compare , Your sin shall find you out.

Job 8:4 If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression;Ver. 4. If thy children have sinned against him] As what man is he that liveth and sinneth not? But Bildad meant that Job’ s children had heinously sinned, had been grievous sinners against their own souls (as afterwards were Korah and his accomplices), had not sinned common sins, and therefore died not common deaths; indeed, they died early and suddenly, and eating and drinking (wherein there might be some excess), and before sacrifice offered for them, as formerly; all this was sad, and moved Job more than anything else. But did it therefore follow that God had cast them away? &c. And he have cast them away for their transgression] Or, and he have expelled or abandoned them into the hand (so the Hebrews hath it elegantly) of their transgressions or rebellions, as so many executioners. Some render it thus, He hath driven them out of the world for their transgression. The Chaldee paraphrast goeth further, interpreting hand here for place (Pagnin.). If God have sent them, saith he, into the place of their wickedness, that is, into hell prepared for the wicked. Now surely, saith Lavater, Inhumanissimus fuit Bildad, qui ista calamitosissimo obiecere non dubitabat, Bildad was a most unmerciful man, who doubted not to lay these things in the dish of him that was before so heavily afflicted, and to heap more load upon him who was ready to sink under his burden; but he did it, say some, of a good intent, to bring Job to a sense of his sin, and to put him in hope of appeasing God s wrath, who had yet spared his life that he might make his peace, and not suddenly slain him, as he had done them; and therefore he assureth him in the following verses, as Eliphaz had done before, that all things shall go well with him if he repent. Albeit thy children have sinned, &c., yet

(4) And he have cast them away.—Literally, then he sent them away. By means of their transgression; it became their destruction.

Verse 4. If thy children have sinned] I know thy children have been cut off by a terrible judgment; but was it not because by transgression they had filled up the measure of their iniquity? And he have cast them away] Has sent them off, says the Targum, to the place of their transgression-to that punishment due to their sins.

4–7. In opposition to Job’s impious principle Bildad brings forward his doctrine of the Divine rectitude on both its sides, the one illustrated in the fate of Job’s children (Job 8:4), the other, as he hopes, to be illustrated in the history of Job himself (Job 8:5-7).

If thy children have sinned against him - Bildad here assumes that the children of Job had been wicked, and had been cut off in their sins.

4. If — The hypothetical way of putting the case by no means deadens the stroke dealt by the following word, thy children. Compare the delicate and impersonal allusion of Eliphaz in Job 5:4. And — Better, then.