Theology with a Wooden Leg: Bildad's Tidy Universe Text: Job 8:1-7
Introduction: When Good Advice Goes Bad
We come now to the second of Job's friends, Bildad the Shuhite. Eliphaz, the first counselor, at least had the decency to begin with a bit of pastoral softness before he brought the hammer down. But Bildad dispenses with the pleasantries. He wades right in, and his words are, as he accuses Job of, a "mighty wind."
Now, we must be careful here. The central problem with Job's friends is not that everything they say is wrong. If that were the case, they would be easy to dismiss. The devil's best lies are always the ones that are ninety-five percent true. The problem with Job's counselors is that they are woodenly right. They possess a tidy, systematic theology that works beautifully on a whiteboard, but shatters into a thousand pieces when it collides with the raw, jagged edges of human suffering in a fallen world. They have a two-dimensional map and are trying to make sense of a three-dimensional man sitting on a three-dimensional ash heap.
Bildad is a traditionalist. He is about to appeal to the wisdom of the fathers, to what has always been known. And what has always been known is that God is just. This is true. God does not pervert justice. This is also true. What a man sows, he will also reap. This is biblical. But Bildad takes these glorious truths and fashions them into a bludgeon. He operates on a simple, mechanical principle of retribution: if you are suffering this intensely, you must have sinned intensely. Full stop. His syllogism is simple: God is just; you are in agony; therefore, you are a great sinner. Q.E.D.
This is the kind of logic that creates Pharisees. It is a theology that has no room for mystery, no place for the strange providences of God, and certainly no category for a righteous man suffering as part of a cosmic battle he knows nothing about. Bildad's speech is a master class in applying a correct premise to a complex situation with all the nuance of a sledgehammer. And in doing so, he slanders both Job and the God he claims to defend.
The Text
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said, "How long will you say these things, And the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert what is right? If your sons sinned against Him, Then He sent them into the power of their transgression. If you would seek God earnestly And plead for the grace of the Almighty, If you are pure and upright, Indeed now He would rouse Himself for you And make your righteous abode at peace. Though your beginning was insignificant, Yet your end will increase greatly."
(Job 8:1-7 LSB)
A Mighty Wind and an Unshakable Premise (v. 1-3)
Bildad begins with an accusation and a rhetorical question that frames his entire argument.
"How long will you say these things, And the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert what is right?" (Job 8:2-3)
Job has just finished his lament, wishing he had never been born. Bildad hears this not as the cry of a tormented soul, but as hot air, a "mighty wind." Job's words are empty because, to Bildad, they seem to challenge the very foundation of his worldview: the impeccable, straightforward justice of God. So he asks the central question, the one that admits only one answer: "Does God pervert justice?"
The answer, of course, is no. God cannot pervert justice. Justice is not a standard outside of God that He must adhere to; justice is an attribute of God. Whatever God does is, by definition, just. Abraham knew this when he asked, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). This was a rhetorical question, affirming God's character.
Bildad's starting point is absolutely correct. God is righteous. The Almighty, El Shaddai, does not twist what is right. But from this unassailable premise, he takes a disastrous leap. He assumes that God's justice must operate in a way that is always immediately and transparently obvious to men. He believes in a closed system of cause and effect, where every effect (suffering) must have a visible and proportionate cause (sin). There is no room in his system for what we, the readers, know to be true: that the cause of Job's suffering is not his sin, but his righteousness, which has become the focal point of a great contest between God and the Accuser.
Brutal Counsel (v. 4)
Having established his principle, Bildad applies it with breathtaking cruelty.
"If your sons sinned against Him, Then He sent them into the power of their transgression." (Job 8:4 LSB)
Let this sink in. Job is a man whose ten children were crushed to death in a single moment. He is grieving. And Bildad, in his zeal to defend God's honor, essentially says, "Well, they must have had it coming." He uses the conditional "if," but the implication is clear. The house fell on them because they were sinners, and God handed them over to the consequences of their sin. This is the logic of the disciples in the New Testament, when they saw the man born blind: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2). Jesus had to dismantle their entire faulty framework: "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him."
Bildad cannot conceive of a universe where the works of God might be displayed through tragedy that is not immediately punitive. He is defending God, he thinks, but he is actually defending a small, manageable caricature of God. His God is predictable, a cosmic vending machine: insert sin, receive judgment. Insert righteousness, receive blessing. But the God of the Bible is sovereign and His ways are not our ways. He is a Father who disciplines His beloved sons, a Potter who shapes His clay through fire, and a King whose purposes are vast, mysterious, and always, ultimately, for His glory and the good of His people.
The Simpleton's Solution (v. 5-7)
From this brutal diagnosis, Bildad offers a simple, straightforward prescription. If the problem is sin, the solution is repentance.
"If you would seek God earnestly And plead for the grace of the Almighty, If you are pure and upright, Indeed now He would rouse Himself for you And make your righteous abode at peace. Though your beginning was insignificant, Yet your end will increase greatly." (Job 8:5-7 LSB)
Once again, the advice is, on the surface, good. Should we seek God earnestly? Yes. Should we plead for His grace? Absolutely. But the "if" clauses are loaded with accusation. Bildad is telling Job, "If you would just do this, and if you were truly pure and upright, then everything would be fixed." The clear implication is that Job is not doing this, and that he is not pure and upright.
This is the essence of prosperity theology, both ancient and modern. It is a conditional gospel. It places the onus on the sufferer. Your health, wealth, and happiness are a direct reflection of your personal righteousness and the quality of your faith. If you are sick, you must have a secret sin. If you are poor, you are not tithing enough. If your children die, well, Bildad has a theory about that.
This is a theology that cannot make sense of the cross. Why did the only truly "pure and upright" man suffer the most agonizing judgment in the history of the world? By Bildad's logic, Jesus must have been the greatest sinner who ever lived. And of course, the Pharisees, Bildad's theological descendants, thought exactly that. They saw Him on the cross and concluded He was smitten by God and afflicted (Isaiah 53:4). They could not see that He was wounded for their transgressions, bruised for their iniquities.
Bildad promises Job a great restoration if he will just follow the formula. And ironically, his prediction comes true. Job's end will be greater than his beginning. But it will not happen because Job discovers some secret sin and follows Bildad's tidy program. It will happen after God Himself shows up in a whirlwind and demolishes everyone's tidy programs, including Job's.
Conclusion: The God of the Whirlwind, Not the Flowchart
Bildad's error is a perpetual temptation for believers. We want a God who fits into our flowcharts. We want a faith that is a set of manageable principles, a divine rulebook that guarantees predictable outcomes. We want to be able to say, "Because I did X, God must do Y."
But we do not worship the God of the flowchart. We worship the God of the whirlwind. His justice is perfect, but it is not simple. His providence is meticulous, but it is not mechanical. We live in a world that is groaning under the curse of sin. In this world, rain falls on the just and the unjust. In this world, righteous men suffer. And sometimes, they suffer because they are righteous, their lives becoming the theater in which God displays His power over sin and Satan.
The answer to suffering is not a formula, but a Person. The answer is Jesus Christ. He is the righteous man who suffered unjustly. He is the one who entered into the heart of the whirlwind, into the very wrath of God against sin, and absorbed it all. He did this so that our suffering would never be merely punitive. For those in Christ, our suffering is always remedial, always purposeful, always conforming us to His image. "All things work together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28). Not some things, but all things. That includes the things that make absolutely no sense to the Bildads of the world.
When we encounter suffering, ours or another's, our first move should not be to pull out a theological slide rule and look for the sin. Our first move should be compassion. It should be to sit in the ashes with them, as the friends did before they opened their foolish mouths. And our second move should be to point them, and ourselves, away from simplistic formulas and toward the God whose wisdom is so much higher than our own, the God who makes sense of suffering not by explaining it away, but by entering into it and redeeming it at the cross.