Job Chapter 8
The First Speech of Bildad
A. Bildad rebukes Job.
1. (Job 8:1–7) If Job was righteous, God would bless and defend him.
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:
“How long will you speak these things,
And the words of your mouth be like a strong wind?
Does God subvert judgment?
Or does the Almighty pervert justice?
If your sons have sinned against Him,
He has cast them away for their transgression.
If you would earnestly seek God
And make your supplication to the Almighty,
If you were pure and upright,
Surely now He would awake for you,
And prosper your rightful dwelling place.
Though your beginning was small,
Yet your latter end would increase abundantly.”
a. How long will you speak these things: Bildad, whom many identify as a descendant of Shuah, Abraham’s son by Keturah as recorded in Genesis 25:1–2, now enters the discussion. His opening words are sharp and impatient. He rebuked Job not only for his continued lament but specifically for his response to Eliphaz in Job chapters 6 and 7. Bildad dismissed Job’s carefully reasoned defense and anguished cries as mere noise, calling them words like a strong wind, loud, forceful, but in his view empty and without substance.
i. Bildad’s tone marks a shift from Eliphaz. “He does not begin as courteously as Eliphaz, but accuses Job bluntly of being a windbag, vehement but empty.” (Andersen) Another observes, “There is not a word of apology, or any touch of friendly sympathy. There is no attempt to soothe and calm the sufferer.” (Bradley)
ii. Bildad represents a different personality type among Job’s friends. “If Eliphaz strikes us as the most refined member of this group, comparatively flexible and sophisticated, then Bildad the Shuhite comes across as the staunch, ramrod traditionalist, the one who sees all issues in black and white and who prides himself on his straightforward, no-nonsense approach.” (Mason)
iii. Bildad was quick to condemn Job’s words without pausing to consider the depth of Job’s suffering. He heard Job’s speech, but he did not hear Job’s pain. His concern was not pastoral care, but doctrinal correctness as he understood it.
b. Does the Almighty pervert justice: Bildad grounded his argument in the justice of God. He assumed that divine justice operates in a rigid, immediate cause-and-effect framework. In his thinking, God never allows suffering apart from personal guilt. Therefore, Job’s calamity could only be explained as punishment for sin.
i. Bildad went so far as to confront Job with the death of his children, saying, “If your sons have sinned against Him, He has cast them away for their transgression.” This was a brutal statement. “There is not only steely indifference to Job’s plight but an arrogant certainty that Job’s children got just what they deserved and that Job was well on his way to the same fate.” (Smick)
ii. This accusation struck at one of Job’s deepest fears. “Job’s children must have sinned. This is getting near the bone; for Job had been concerned about this very point and, by sacrifice, had provided against even their hidden sins.” (Andersen) Bildad spoke with confidence, but without compassion, and without knowledge of the heavenly proceedings recorded in Job chapters 1 and 2.
c. If you would earnestly seek God … If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awake for you: Like Eliphaz, Bildad was unaware of the unseen conflict in the heavenly realm. Since he could not see God’s purposes beyond immediate circumstances, he interpreted Job’s suffering strictly through moral calculus. His solution was simple, repent, seek God, and restoration would follow.
i. Notably, Bildad’s call for Job to seek God came immediately after his assertion that Job’s sons died because of their sin. Clarke notes the implied logic, “He cut them off in their sins, but he spares thee; and this is a proof that he waits to be gracious to thee.” Bildad saw this as mercy, but it would have felt cruel to Job.
ii. To Job, this was hollow encouragement, the equivalent of shallow optimism in the face of devastating loss. “The ‘gospel of temperament’ works very well if you are suffering only from psychical neuralgia, so to speak, and all you need is a cup of tea; but if you have a real deep complaint, the injunction to ‘Cheer up’ is an insult. What is the use of telling a woman who has lost her husband and sons in the war to ‘Cheer up and look on the bright side’? There is no bright side, it is absolute blackness, and if God cannot come to her help, truly she is in a pitiable condition.” (Chambers)
iii. Bildad’s words also carried an implicit accusation. By saying, “If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awake for you,” he implied that Job was not pure or upright. “So Bildad spoke, suggesting that Job was not pure and upright, since God did not appear to deliver him.” (Meyer)
d. Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would increase abundantly: Bildad concluded with what sounded like a hopeful promise. In doing so, he was both wrong and right.
i. He was wrong because he assumed Job’s present suffering proved moral failure. Since Job was not prospering, Bildad concluded that Job had not truly repented or sought God. “He wished to prove that Job could not possibly be an upright man, for if he were so, he here affirms that his prosperity would increase continually.” (Spurgeon)
ii. Yet Bildad was right in a way he did not understand. Job’s latter end would indeed increase abundantly. “It is true, as indeed the facts of the book of Job prove: for Job did greatly increase in his latter end. His beginning was small: he was brought down to poverty, to the potsherd and to the dunghill. He had many graves, but no children; he had had many losses, he had now nothing left to lose; and yet God did awake for him. His righteousness came out from the darkness which had eclipsed it; he shone in sevenfold prosperity so that the words of Bildad were prophetic, though he knew it not. God put into his mouth language which did come true, after all.” (Spurgeon)
In this first speech, Bildad stands as a warning. He defended God’s justice, but he misapplied it. He spoke truth without wisdom, doctrine without discernment, and certainty without compassion.
2. (Job 8:8–10) Job should respect ancient wisdom.
“For inquire, please, of the former age,
And consider the things discovered by their fathers;
For we were born yesterday, and know nothing,
Because our days on earth are a shadow.
Will they not teach you and tell you,
And utter words from their heart?”
a. Inquire, please, of the former age: Bildad now appealed to tradition and to the accumulated wisdom of past generations. In his mind, the ancients had already settled the matter Job was wrestling with. He urged Job to consult what earlier generations had discovered, believing that long experience proved that God always rewards the righteous and always punishes the wicked in visible, earthly ways.
i. The argument was simple and confident. “If Job would only take the time to consider ancient tradition, he would find that God only does right. Sinners get just punishment, and good men are blessed with health and prosperity.” (Smick) To Bildad, tradition functioned as final authority.
ii. Yet even the earliest biblical history contradicts Bildad’s rigid conclusions. Abel was righteous and pleasing to God, yet he was murdered by his brother Cain. The record of Scripture itself demonstrates that suffering is not always a direct indicator of personal guilt, even though Bildad assumed the ancients taught otherwise.
iii. Chambers rightly observed the pastoral failure in Bildad’s approach. “The biggest benediction one man can find in another is not in his words, but that he implies: ‘I do not know the answer to your problem, all I can say is that God alone must know; let us go to Him.’… The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the greater works will be done by prayer.” Bildad quoted tradition, but he did not lead Job toward humble dependence on God.
b. For we were born yesterday, and know nothing: Bildad offered what sounded like a gracious explanation for Job’s supposed errors. In his view, Job spoke wrongly simply because he failed to consult ancient wisdom. Compared to the long ages of human experience, Job’s life was short and insignificant, therefore his conclusions could not be trusted.
i. Because our days on earth are a shadow: Bildad emphasized the brevity and frailty of human life. Clarke reflects on this image, “The following beautiful motto I have seen on a sundial: Unbrae sumus! ‘We are shadows!’ Such as time is, such are you; as fleeting, as transitory, as unsubstantial. These shadows lost, time is lost; time lost, soul lost! Reader take heed!” Bildad’s words here are poetically true, but again misapplied.
ii. There is wisdom in learning from the past, but tradition must be handled carefully. “To be sure, we can today learn from the past, but the past must be a rudder to guide us into the future and not an anchor to hold us back. The fact that something was said years ago is no guarantee that it is right. The past contains as much folly as wisdom.” (Wiersbe, cited in Lawson) Bildad treated ancient opinion as infallible, when in reality even ancient wisdom must be tested against the truth of God and the realities He allows.
In this section, Bildad elevated tradition to an absolute authority. He appealed to the past without recognizing that God is not bound by simplistic formulas, even if those formulas are old, widely accepted, and confidently repeated.
B. Bildad applies his common-sense wisdom to Job’s situation.
1. (Job 8:11–18) The rule of cause and effect applied to Job’s situation.
“Can the papyrus grow up without a marsh?
Can the reeds flourish without water?
While it is yet green and not cut down,
It withers before any other plant.
So are the paths of all who forget God;
And the hope of the hypocrite shall perish,
Whose confidence shall be cut off,
And whose trust is a spider’s web.
He leans on his house, but it does not stand.
He holds it fast, but it does not endure.
He grows green in the sun,
And his branches spread out in his garden.
His roots wrap around the rock heap,
And look for a place in the stones.
If he is destroyed from his place,
Then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have not seen you.’”
a. Can the papyrus grow up without a marsh: Bildad now turned to illustrations from nature to reinforce his rigid doctrine of cause and effect. The papyrus plant depends entirely on water for life. Remove the marsh, and the plant inevitably withers. To Bildad, this was proof that visible prosperity is always the result of the right conditions, and visible ruin is always the result of their absence. He assumed spiritual life worked the same way, therefore Job’s condition must reveal spiritual failure.
i. Bildad used the papyrus as a picture of the hypocrite, someone who appears to flourish but lacks true depth and substance. Spurgeon expanded this image powerfully, describing the hypocrite through Bildad’s metaphor. Like the reed, hypocrites grow up quickly, like the reed, hypocrites are hollow and without substance, like the reed, hypocrites are easily bent, like the reed, hypocrites can lower their head in false humility, like the reed, hypocrites bear no fruit. Bildad’s imagery was vivid and effective, but his target was wrong.
ii. It withers before any other plant: Spurgeon noted the tragic irony in this image. “Long before the Lord comes to cut the hypocrite down, it often happens that he dries up for want of the mire on which he lives. The excitement, the encouragement, the example, the profit, the respectability, the prosperity, upon which he lived fail him, and he fails too.” Bildad was describing a real spiritual danger, but not Job’s condition.
b. So are the paths of all who forget God: Bildad confidently concluded that anyone who forgets God will inevitably collapse, just as a plant without water dies. He allowed for temporary prosperity, but insisted that ultimate ruin was guaranteed. In his thinking, Job’s suffering placed him squarely in this category.
i. Bildad described the hope of such a man as fragile and deceptive. “A spider’s web; which though it be formed with great art and industry, and may do much mischief to others, yet is most slender and feeble, and easily swept down or pulled in pieces, and unable to defend the spider that made it.” (Poole) What appears carefully constructed and reliable is, in reality, powerless under pressure.
ii. Bildad’s metaphors were accurate in principle but deeply flawed in application. Chambers warned against this very error. “If you take an illustration from Nature and apply it to a man’s moral life or spiritual life, you will not be true to facts because the natural law does not work in the spiritual world. God says, ‘And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten’; that is not a natural law, and yet it is what happens in the spiritual world.” Bildad assumed God never acts outside rigid natural patterns.
iii. Morgan summarized the problem succinctly. “Again we have to say Bildad was quite right in his statements of truth, and quite wrong in his intended deductions so far as Job was concerned.” Bildad defended truth in theory while denying it in practice.
2. (Job 8:19–22) God’s promise of blessing to the blameless.
“Behold, this is the joy of His way,
And out of the earth others will grow.
Behold, God will not cast away the blameless,
Nor will He uphold the evildoers.
He will yet fill your mouth with laughing,
And your lips with rejoicing.
Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,
And the dwelling place of the wicked will come to nothing.”
a. This is the joy of His way … God will not cast away the blameless: Bildad concluded with assurance that God always restores the righteous and always rejects the wicked. His message was more blunt and less refined than Eliphaz’s, but the theology was the same. If Job would repent, joy would return, laughter would replace mourning, and vindication would follow.
i. Andersen described the stark simplicity of Bildad’s worldview. “In his simple theology everything can be explained in terms of two kinds of men, the blameless and the secretly wicked. Outwardly the same, God distinguishes them by prospering the one and destroying the other.” Bildad even used the same word for blameless that God Himself used to describe Job in Job 1:1, yet he refused to apply it to Job’s present condition.
b. Those who hate you will be clothed with shame: Bildad implied that Job’s current humiliation would end if he would only accept Bildad’s diagnosis and solution. After the harsh exchange between Eliphaz and Job, Bildad offered repentance as the path to public vindication and restored honor.
i. Yet Bildad’s great deficiency was not theological vocabulary, but personal knowledge of God. He had the wisdom of the ancients and a tightly organized belief system, both of which reinforced each other. What he lacked was experiential humility before God. Bildad and the other friends spoke much about God, but they never spoke to God on Job’s behalf. There is no record of prayer, intercession, or shared sorrow. Job, however, was being led toward a deeper encounter, one so profound that he would later say, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” as recorded in Job 42:5. Bildad defended God with formulas, while Job was being drawn into the presence of God Himself.
