Bildad’s Second Discourse.
Bildad, who is ever brief, retorts on the copious and impassioned answers of Job, not only as contemptuous towards his friends, but as altogether vain in the effort to justify himself, while evidently an object of divine displeasure and judgment for concealed evil. Did he alone constitute an exception to the invariably righteous government of God? If not, why such a volume of words, and why such vehement invectives? Divine judgment, however, would take its way none the less surely and awfully for universal warning.
And Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,
How long will ye make a hunt for words?
Consider, and afterwards we will speak.
Why are we accounted as cattle,
Stopped up [that is, stupid] in your eyes?
He teareth his soul in his anger:
Shall the earth be forsaken for thee,
And shall a rock be removed out of its place?
Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out,
And the flame of his fire shall not shine.
The light in his tabernacle shall be dark,
And his lamp shall be put out with him.
The steps of his strength shall be straitened,
And his own counsel shall cast him dawn
For by his feet is he driven into a net,
And he walketh over the meshes;
The trap seizeth on his heel;
The snare prevaileth over him;
His cord [is] hidden in the earth,
And his trap upon the pathway.
Terrors shall terrify him around,
And scare him at his footsteps.
His calamity [is] hungry,
And destruction [is] ready at his side.
The first-born of death devoureth the parts of his skin―
Devoureth his parts.
His confidence shall be torn out of his tent,
And shall march him off to the king of terrors;
There shall dwell in his tent what [is] not his;
On his dwelling shall sulphur be scattered.
Beneath, his roots shall be dried up,
And above, his branch shall be cut off.
His memorial shall perish from the earth,
And he shall have no name on the plain.
They shall drive him from light into darkness,
And shall chase him from the world.
No shoot nor sprout shall he have among his people,
And no escaped one in his dwellings.
At his day they of the west will be astonished,
And they of the east take fright.
Surely so the dwellings of the wicked,
And this the place of [him that] knoweth not God.
Thus keenly does Bildad cleave to his severe impression of Job’s state before God, formed by the (to him) irresistible evidence of divine judgments, which had swept away all his prosperity, his family, his health, and left him a prey to agonizing sorrows and conflicts in his soul. How could any reasonable man question more than he that God had a controversy with Job, who was suffering only as he deserved, as surely as God is just? He therefore felt no small vexation at the continuance of a controversy when the case was really and unanswerably plain. It was only Job’s contemptuous self-assurance that could evade for a moment the force of their reasoning. Let Job be as violently restive as he may, he will find out in the end that, as they are not to be counted cattle for stupidity, so the moral government of God is as immovable as the course of the earth, or the stubborn rock. What a man sows he reaps: if evil, ruin; if good, blessing. But of the latter Bildad has not a word to say. Did he know what grace works through faith? Faith can not only remove the rock, but cast a mountain into the sea.
Of this Bildad knew little or nothing. He only thinks of the deep wickedness, whatever the fair outside, which had drawn down on Job such unparalleled misery from God. So, in forcible figures, he sets out the extinction of all light in the ungodly, when the flame of his fire should shine no more, and the lamp over him should go out. No effects should extricate, but rather involve him more; and not rashness, but his own counsel, plunge him in utter ruin. No craft avails, but ensnares, him that trusts himself instead of God; and hence his own feet send him into the net, and he walks over the meshes, heedless of what is underneath. The trap, the snare, the cord, meet him wherever he turns; terrors alarm him on every side, and dog his footsteps. His calamity, instead of being satiated, is hungry for more; and destruction, or a heavy load of suffering, is at his side, ready to weigh him down. Deadly disease—death’s first-born―is already devouring the parts of his skin—devouring, more than the skin, the parts themselves. In short, all that makes his tent bright, in the present or in prospect, is torn out, and he has to march off to the king of terrors.
Nor does the blast of God stop with the evil-doer; but, extending far and long beyond himself, it hangs over his memory, and pursues his descendants. Hence there dwells in his tent that which shall not be his own, and over his habitation sulphur is scattered. Nothing but withers above ground, and all underneath dries away. Neither in the settled parts of the earth does his memorial stand, nor has he a name in the wilderness, but he is an outlaw from the habitable world, consigned from light to darkness, with no sprout nor shoot remaining among his people, not one escaped in his dwellings. The desolation is complete; so much so, that they of the west are astounded on account of his day, and they of the east take fright; unless, with some ancients and moderns, we take these words as descriptions, not of place, but time, and so understand “posterity” and “ancestors.” But it is hard to see, now “ancestors” could be horrified, though we can readily think of “posterity” being astonished. Bildad concludes his answer with the assurance that only thus does it befall the dwellings of the wicked, and thus the place of him that knows not God. The application, in his mind, is as obvious as it is mistaken; the abstract truth abides, and has its own just place.