Job 8

Bildad, the second of Job’s friends, answers Job with a hard certainty: God is just, so suffering must be the fruit of sin. He appeals to the wisdom of the ancients and to pictures from nature, promising restoration if Job turns to God. His principle sounds right, but he wrongly applies it to Job, and the book will show that his tidy formula is not the whole truth.

Job 8:1

Bildad speaks next. He is the second friend to answer Job, after Eliphaz. Where Eliphaz began gently, Bildad comes in sharper. His name and home mark him as a man from the same eastern world as Job.

BSA: Shuhite (“a descendant of Shuach, from the Shuah area”): This places Bildad as a real man with a family and homeland, a fellow elder of the East.

Job 8:2

Bildad has no patience for Job’s grief. He calls Job’s honest cries from the previous chapters mere noise. He treats lament as bluster, which is a hurtful way to meet a sufferer.

BSA: blustering (“strong, mighty”): Job’s words seem to Bildad like a powerful gust, loud and forceful but with nothing solid in it.

Job 8:3

Here is Bildad’s main point, and it is true in itself: God never twists justice. The trouble is what he builds on it. He assumes that Job’s pain proves Job’s guilt, and Job’s suffering is more mysterious than that.

BSA: pervert (“twist or corrupt”): The word pictures bending something straight into something crooked; Bildad says God never does that to right judgment. Almighty (“Shadday, all-powerful”): Bildad uses a name stressing God’s power, to argue that such a God cannot be unfair.

See also: Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4.

Job 8:4

Bildad coldly suggests Job’s children died because they sinned. This is cruel to a grieving father. It also shows how a good principle, wrongly applied, can wound. Scripture elsewhere warns against reading every disaster as a punishment.

BSA: rebellion (“transgression, disobedience, or revolt”): Bildad says their own revolt became their undoing, as if God simply let sin run its course.

See also: Luke 13:4-5.

Job 8:5-6

Bildad offers a way back: seek God earnestly and ask for mercy. Prayer for mercy is good advice. But his “if you are pure” quietly accuses Job of not being pure. Job has just been called blameless by God himself.

BSA: earnestly (“diligently, with care”): Bildad urges seeking God early and with real effort, not halfheartedly. rouse Himself (“stir Himself, awaken”): He pictures God as stirring to act for Job, as one waking to help.

Hebrew: שָׁחַר (shachar, H7836) — “to seek early, to look for eagerly.” The word for “earnestly seek” is related to the word for dawn. It suggests seeking God at first light, with eagerness and priority.

See also: Job 1:8.

Job 8:7

Bildad promises that Job’s future will far outshine his past. In the end, the book of Job does show God restoring Job twice over. Yet Bildad is wrong about the reason, since Job’s restoration comes by God’s grace and not because he proved himself pure.

BSA: flourish (“increase greatly, become very prosperous, grow exceedingly”): The promise is of rich and rapid growth, a great reversal of Job’s present ruin.

See also: Job 42:12.

Job 8:8-10

Bildad now turns to inherited wisdom. He says that earlier generations observed how life works and passed it down. Learning from those before us is wise. But he admits human life is brief and our knowledge is small, which quietly applies to him too.

BSA: shadow (“a dark image, fleeting moment”): Life is like a shadow that lengthens and is gone, so no single person sees the whole picture. discoveries (“that which their fathers have searched out”): The wisdom of the elders is what they patiently searched out over many years.

See also: Job 14:2; Psalm 144:4.

Job 8:11-12

The first picture is of papyrus and reeds. They are lush and green beside the Nile marshes, but they wither fast if the water is gone. Bildad means that life without its source cannot last, however green it looks for a time.

BSA: papyrus (“reed, a type of aquatic plant”): This is the tall Egyptian water plant, which depends wholly on standing water.

Job 8:13

Bildad applies the picture. Those who forget God lose their hope, just as reeds lose water. The general truth stands: a life cut off from God has nothing lasting underneath it. The mistake is only in assuming Job fits this description.

BSA: godless (“profane, hypocritical, without faith”): The word describes someone who has pushed God out of life, not merely someone who has failed. hope (“cord of expectancy, waiting for something to happen”): Hope is pictured as a cord stretched toward the future; for the godless, the cord snaps.

See also: Psalm 9:17.

Job 8:14-15

The second picture is a spider’s web. It looks like a home and a refuge, but it cannot bear any weight. Trust that is not placed in God holds up only until someone leans on it, and then it fails.

BSA: web (“house, place of security”): The same word can mean a house, so the spider’s web is the false home the godless depend on. fragile (“easily broken, cut off”): His confidence is already cut through, though he does not yet know it.

See also: Matthew 7:26-27.

Job 8:16-18

The third picture is a vigorous plant, thriving in sun and spreading over the garden, its roots gripping a pile of stones. It seems secure. Yet when it is pulled up, its place forgets it entirely. Bildad warns of a prosperity that vanishes without a trace.

BSA: uprooted (“destroyed, swallowed up”): The plant is not merely moved but swallowed, as if it had never existed. disown (“deny, reject”): Even the ground where it grew refuses to acknowledge it.

See also: Psalm 37:35-36.

Job 8:19

Bildad speaks with sad irony. The only joy of such a person is how he ends, and then others quickly grow in his place. Human lives are replaceable in the soil of this world. The line closes the picture with bitter finality.

BSA: joy (“rejoicing, great delight”): Bildad uses the word sarcastically: this fading flourish is all the delight the godless will ever know.

Job 8:20

Bildad sums up his whole case in two lines: God will not cast away the blameless, nor help the wicked. As a general rule of God’s character, this is comforting. As a rule that explains every single sorrow, it fails, and Job’s life proves it.

BSA: blameless (“perfect, complete, morally pure”): The word means whole or complete, the very term used of Job in the opening of the book. reject (“spurn, cast away”): God does not throw away the person who is whole toward him.

Hebrew: תָּם (tam, H8535) — “complete, whole, sound.” This is the same word used of Job in Job 1:1. Bildad uses it without realizing that he is describing the man he is accusing.

See also: Job 1:1.

Job 8:21-22

Bildad ends on hope, though it rests on a condition. Laughter and shouts of joy will come if Job turns back, while his enemies will be shamed and the tents of the wicked will vanish. The promise of joy is lovely, even if Bildad misreads Job.

BSA: shout of joy (“loud cry, joyful sound”): The word suggests a ringing cry of celebration, replacing the cries of grief. clothed (“wrapped, covered”): Shame is pictured as a garment that surrounds the wicked completely.

See also: Psalm 126:2; Job 42:10.