Commentary - Job 18:1-21

Bird's-eye view

Here in the second round of speeches, Bildad the Shuhite returns to the fray, and he has clearly had enough of Job's protestations of innocence. His patience, if he ever had any, is completely gone. What we have in this chapter is not an argument so much as a barrage. Bildad unloads a detailed, poetic, and utterly terrifying description of the fate of the wicked man. Every word of it is, in the abstract, theologically sound. The problem is that it is a truth being used as a club, swung with great force at the head of a suffering man. Bildad is a prime example of a miserable comforter, a man whose theological system is more important to him than the brother sitting before him on an ash heap. He ignores Job's actual condition and instead delivers a lecture that is as cold as it is cruel, effectively accusing Job of being the very man he describes.

Bildad's speech is a masterpiece of pastoral malpractice. He is so certain of his retribution theology, the neat and tidy doctrine that the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer, that he cannot see the man in front of him. He sees only a theological problem that needs to be solved, and the solution is for Job to confess the secret sin that has brought all this on. The speech is a long, impersonal description of a wicked man's downfall, but the application is personal and sharp. By the end, there is no doubt that Bildad is holding up this horrifying portrait and telling Job, "This is you."

Outline

Context In Job

This chapter contains Bildad's second speech, and it follows Job's lament in chapter 17. Job has just expressed the depths of his despair, seeing the grave as his only hope and his friends as mockers. He has maintained his integrity before God, but his hope in this life is gone. Bildad does not respond to any of this with sympathy. He hears Job's words not as the cries of a tormented soul, but as an attack on the established moral order of the universe, and by extension, an attack on the wisdom of himself and his friends. The second cycle of speeches is generally harsher than the first, and Bildad's contribution here is a prime example. The gloves are off. He is no longer trying to gently persuade Job; he is now trying to bludgeon him into submission with the heavy hammer of orthodox doctrine, wrongly applied.

Key Issues

The Miserable Comforter

1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,

Bildad takes his turn. The formal introduction reminds us that this is a structured debate, but the content that follows is anything but a dispassionate search for truth. This is personal now.

2 “How long until you put an end to your words? Show understanding and then we can talk.

This is breathtakingly arrogant. Bildad opens not with comfort, but with exasperation. He accuses Job of speaking empty words, of being a windbag. The condition he sets is telling: "Show understanding," which in this context means, "Start agreeing with me," and only then can a real conversation happen. This is the tactic of a man who has no intention of listening. He is waiting for Job to stop resisting so he can deliver the final verdict.

3 Why are we regarded as beasts, As dense in your eyes?

Here we see the real issue for Bildad. His pride is wounded. Job, in his desperate search for answers, has questioned their simplistic wisdom, and Bildad takes it as a personal insult. He is more concerned with being seen as wise than he is with Job's agony. He and his friends are the educated ones, the theologians, and this man on the ash heap has the audacity to call them dense. The focus has shifted from Job's suffering to the counselors' offended dignity.

4 O you who tear yourself in your anger, For your sake is the earth to be forsaken, Or the rock to be moved from its place?

This is a cruel caricature of Job's grief. Bildad dismisses Job's anguish as a childish temper tantrum. Then he delivers a sarcastic theological jab. "Do you think you are so important, Job, that God should suspend the laws of the universe for you?" The law he has in mind is the law of retribution. Bildad believes the world operates on a fixed, mechanical principle of justice, and he accuses Job of demanding that God make an exception. The profound irony is that God is, in fact, doing something entirely outside of Bildad's neat system. But Bildad is so committed to his tidy theological box that he cannot see it.

5 “Indeed, the light of the wicked goes out, And the flame of his fire gives no light.

Now Bildad begins his long, impersonal poem about the fate of "the wicked." He stops addressing Job directly, but everyone knows who he is talking about. This is a classic passive-aggressive maneuver. The imagery is potent. The wicked man may appear to have light, prosperity, and life, but it is temporary. It will be extinguished.

6 The light in his tent is darkened, And his lamp goes out above him.

The darkness is total, both within his home (his tent) and personally (his lamp above him). There is no refuge from this judgment. It is an all-encompassing gloom that settles over every part of the wicked man's life.

7 His vigorous stride is shortened, And his own counsel brings him down.

The wicked man's strength fails him. His own clever plans, the very source of his pride and success, become the instruments of his ruin. Sin is always a bad counselor. It promises freedom and power but leads only to a shortened stride and a great fall.

8 For he is thrown into the net by his own feet, And he steps on the netting.

He is the author of his own destruction. No external force is even needed; his own choices, his own steps, lead him straight into the trap. This is a profound truth about the nature of sin, but in Bildad's mouth, it is a heartless accusation against a righteous man.

9 A snare seizes him by the heel, And a device snaps shut on him.

The imagery of trapping continues. The destruction is sudden, inescapable, and complete. Just as an animal is caught, so the wicked man is seized by the consequences of his actions.

10 A rope for him is hidden in the ground, And a trap for him on the path.

The world of the wicked man is a minefield. Danger is everywhere, hidden and waiting. There is no safe path for the man who has forsaken God's way.

11 All around terrors frighten him, And harass him at every step.

The punishment is not just external, but internal. He is tormented by fear, by "terrors" that chase him down. This is a picture of a man whose conscience is in revolt, whose life is a constant state of anxiety and dread.

12 His vigor is famished, And disaster is ready at his side.

His strength is consumed by hunger, and calamity is personified as a constant companion, waiting for the right moment to strike. There is a sense of inevitability here. Disaster is not a possibility; it is an appointment.

13 The firstborn of death eats parts of his skin; It eats parts of him.

"The firstborn of death" is a powerful Hebrew idiom for a deadly disease. Bildad describes a gruesome wasting away, a disease that consumes a man's body piece by piece. He is describing, with horrific accuracy, what Job is experiencing with his sores, and attributing it to the judgment of God on the wicked.

14 He is torn from the security of his tent, And they march him in step before the king of terrors.

His home, the place of security, offers no protection. He is dragged out and brought before the "king of terrors," a magnificent personification of Death itself. Death is not a gentle release for the wicked man, but a terrifying sovereign to whom he must answer.

15 There dwells in his tent nothing of his; Brimstone is scattered on his abode.

His home is left desolate, possessed by strangers or by nothing at all. The scattering of brimstone is a clear echo of the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Bildad is saying that the wicked man's home becomes a place of permanent, divine curse.

16 His roots are dried below, And his branch is cut off above.

Using the image of a tree, Bildad describes total annihilation. There is no life source from below (the roots) and no fruitfulness above (the branch). The man and his entire line are finished.

17 Memory of him perishes from the earth, And he has no name abroad.

His legacy is erased. Not only is his family line cut off, but his very name is forgotten. In a culture that prized legacy and remembrance, this was the ultimate curse. He simply ceases to have ever mattered.

18 He is driven from light into darkness, And chased from the inhabited world.

He is exiled, cast out from the community of men and from the light of life itself. His end is one of total isolation and darkness.

19 He has neither offspring nor posterity among his people, Nor any survivor where he sojourned.

Bildad hammers the point home. This is a particularly vicious blow to Job, who has just lost all ten of his children. Bildad is essentially telling him that this is exactly what happens to wicked men. It is an act of profound pastoral cruelty.

20 Those in the west are appalled at his fate, And those in the east are seized with horror.

The wicked man's downfall becomes a global spectacle, a cautionary tale for all the world to see. His ruin is so complete that it horrifies everyone who hears of it.

21 Surely such are the dwellings of the unjust, And this is the place of him who does not know God.”

And here is the final, damning conclusion. Bildad drops the poetic veil and makes his application explicit. "This," he says, "is what happens. This is the dwelling place, the final state, of the man who is unjust and who does not know God." The unspoken words hang heavy in the air: "...and that man, Job, is you."

Application

The great temptation for those who love theology is to become a Bildad. It is the temptation to love our theological systems more than we love our brothers and sisters. Bildad had his doctrine of retribution, and it was a tidy system. It explained the world. When Job's suffering presented a case that did not fit the system, Bildad's response was not to question his system, but to condemn the man.

We must take care that our doctrine serves our love, not the other way around. Truth without love is not Christian truth; it is a clanging cymbal. When we encounter a brother or sister in the midst of inexplicable suffering, our first response should not be to pull out a theological flowchart to diagnose their sin. Our first response should be to weep with those who weep.

Ultimately, the portrait Bildad paints of the man under God's curse finds its truest fulfillment in one place. On the cross, Jesus Christ was driven from light into darkness. He was cut off from the land of the living. He bore the terrors. He did this not because He was wicked, but because He was taking the place of the wicked. He took the curse that Bildad describes so that we, who deserved it, might be brought into the light. The answer to Job's suffering, and ours, is not a better formula, but a suffering Savior.