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The second speech of Bildad

Chapter 18

Bildad reproves Job for presumption and impatience (18:1-4)

Bildad told Job to stop wasting time with foolish talk. Like Eliphaz before him, he scorned Job's arguments, phrased in long figures of speech, though they all spoke in that way. In previous times, when he was in power and prosperity, Job had the last word in all debates (chapter 29:22), and was greatly respected. But because he was now impoverished and brought low he was no longer respected and was even said to lack intelligence. "The poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard" (Ecclesiastes 9:16).

Bildad said Job was treating them as beasts, and considering them stupid. He was exaggerating, of course, for Job had been just complaining of their lack of sympathy for him. He had indeed called them mockers, had represented them both as unwise and as unkind, lacking in the reason and compassion of men, but he did not count them as beasts. Bildad resented what Job had said as if it had been the greatest of offences. Proud men are apt to think themselves slighted more than really they are. He also wanted a pretence to be hard upon Job, and this would be that Job had been offensive to him.

Bildad also accused Job of arrogance and presumption, as if the course of nature should be changed and the settled rules of government violated to gratify the Job's humour. It was a reproof of Job's justification of himself and passionate complaints, falsely insinuating that Job was a wicked man and refused to accept the punishment which was a consequence of his sins. Of course, to expect that God's counsels should change, his method alter, and his word fail, to please us, is as absurd and unreasonable as to think the earth should be forsaken for us and the rock removed out of its place.

Bildad thought he knew how the universe should be run, and he saw Job as an illustration of the consequences of sin. Bildad rejected Job's side of the story because it did not fit in with his outlook on life. It is easy to condemn Bildad because his errors are obvious to us who are much better informed and know the reason for Job's trials; unfortunately, however, we often act the same way when our ideas are threatened.

The calamities of the wicked (18:5-21)

The rest of Bildad's discourse is entirely taken up in an elegant description of the miserable condition of a wicked man, in which there is a great deal of truth:

• a sinful condition is disastrous, and iniquity without repentance brings ruin. (But it isn't true that all wicked people are visibly and openly punished in this world, or that all who are brought into great distress and trouble in this world are to be regarded as wicked people who are paying for their sins).

• the destruction of the wicked is foreseen and foretold as like putting out his light, the best and brightest part of him, so that he will be in total darkness. He could be referring to Job's complaints of the great distress he was in and the darkness he should shortly make his bed in. The wicked may have some light for a while, in the way of a little pleasure, joy, hope, wealth, honour and influence. But his light is but a spark (v. 5), and is soon completely extinguished. He shall never have true comfort, joy or hope. The little light that is in him is short-lived and any little hope he may have shall perish when he dies (Proverbs 11:7).

• Satan is preparing for his destruction. As the tempter, he is the robber who casts the net and the snare in the way of sinners (v. 9) and they will be caught. If he can make them sinful like himself, he will make them miserable like himself.

• The wicked prepares for his own destruction by continuing to sin, and so building up his measure of guilt, snared in the work of his own hands (Psalm 9:16).

• God is preparing for his destruction. The sinner by his sin is preparing the fuel and then God by his wrath is preparing the fire. "The Lord knows how to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgement" (2 Peter 2:9).

• The wicked is disheartened and weakened by continual terrors arising from the sense of his own guilt and the dread of God's wrath (v. 11,12). That which he relied upon as his strength (his wealth, power, pomp, friends, and the hardiness of his own spirit) shall fail him in the time of need. Ageing and disease warn him that the end of his life on earth is near (v.13).

• But the king of terrors is death (v.14), which wicked people are reserved for, and by reason of which sinners are all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:15). It is terrible to nature, but to the wicked it is worse because it ends that life in which he placed his happiness, his body is utterly destroyed and forgotten (v. 15-17).

• He is then driven from the light of this world into existence in utter darkness (v. 18), the darkness of hell, never to see light (Psalm 49:19), not the least gleam, nor any hopes of it. How happy then are the saints, and how much indebted to the Lord Jesus, by whom death is so far abolished, and its meaning altered, that this king of terrors becomes a friend and servant!

• All his honour shall be laid and lost in the dust, or stained with perpetual infamy, so that he shall have no name in the street, departing without being desired. Thus the judgements of God follow him, after death, in this world, as an indication of the misery his soul is in after death, and an earnest of that everlasting shame and contempt to which he shall rise in the great day. "The memory of the righteous is blessed, But the name of the wicked will rot." Proverbs 10:7.

• His descendants will be driven away or disappear, v. 19. Sin entails a curse upon posterity, and the iniquity of the fathers is often visited upon the children.

• There is a universal amazement at his fall, v. 20. It frightens those that see it, for it is sudden, dreadful and threatening to all about him; and those that come after are astonished when they hear about it.

This is likely to be the sum of knowledge in the patriarchal age of the justice of God and the doom of the wicked, or those who do not know God. It is based upon their knowledge of God as taught down the generations and their many observations of His providence (v. 21).

Here we see the beginning and the end of the wickedness of this wicked world:

• The beginning of it is ignorance of God, and it is a wilful ignorance, for there is sufficient to be known of Him to leave everyone for ever inexcusable. All of creation around us is a solid proof that Almighty God is real. The theories of evolution have been invented in order to deter searching minds from finding the real cause of our existence, and sinful man hides behind them in order not to face the reality of a holy Creator who will hold them accountable for their actions. They proceed to commit all iniquity, trusting that it will go unpunished.

• The end of it is total and eternal destruction:
  a) The wicked will be consigned to eternal darkness, away from the presence of God: "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (2 Thessalonians 1:8),
  b) What is left on earth will be completely destroyed and replaced by a new heaven and a new earth.

 

R David Jones

 

 

 

 

1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

2 "How long till you put an end to words? Gain understanding, and afterward we will speak

.3 Why are we counted as beasts, and regarded as stupid in your sight?

4 You who tear yourself in anger, shall the earth be forsaken for you? Or shall the rock be removed from its place?

5 "The light of the wicked indeed goes out, and the flame of his fire does not shine.

6 The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp beside him is put out.

7 The steps of his strength are shortened, and his own counsel casts him down.

8 For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks into a snare.

9 The net takes him by the heel, and a snare lays hold of him.

10 A noose is hidden for him on the ground, and a trap for him in the road.

11 Terrors frighten him on every side, and drive him to his feet.

12 His strength is starved, and destruction is ready at his side.

13 It devours patches of his skin; the firstborn of death devours his limbs.

14 He is uprooted from the shelter of his tent, and they parade him before the king of terrors.

15 They dwell in his tent who are none of his; brimstone is scattered on his dwelling.

16 His roots are dried out below, and his branch withers above.

17 The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name among the renowned.

18 He is driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.

19 He has neither son nor posterity among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings.

20 Those in the west are astonished at his day, as those in the east are frightened.

21 Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God."