Bible Commentary - Job 8

In this chapter, Job’s second friend speaks, rebuking Job for his harsh words against God and promising him future restoration.

Technically Bildad is a separate person from Eliphaz, and so we might imagine that they would have distinct personalities and attitudes towards life.  However, what we observe here (and throughout the rest of this book) is that Job’s three friends are indistinguishable for all practical purposes.

Both Eliphaz and Bildad show the exact same attitude and perspective on Job’s suffering, and they are equally unhelpful to Job in the midst of his sorrow and pain.  The basic message in Bildad’s speech is that God is just, punishes the wicked, and restores the righteous, but that sinners hope in vain and can only expect to be overthrown.  The basic idea is that the wicked may flourish for a time (like a papyrus), but that in the same way they sprout up, they will also wither.  The implication is that Job’s sons must have sinned to incur punishment, and perhaps Job has also sinned.  Like Eliphaz, Bildad is calling for Job to repent, at which point we could expect God to restore Job and make his future even better than his past.

This is all pretty much the same as what Eliphaz said in chapter 5.  They both have tremendous confidence that the “godless” or those “who forget God” (v. 13) will suffer disaster because they trust in their own cunning or shrewdness to bring success in life, and this trust is fragile, like a spider’s web.

Both Bildad and Eliphaz also tell Job that he should make an appeal to God, “implore the compassion of the Almighty” (v. 5).  Every time I read this I find myself wondering what they think about God.  More specifically, who do they think God is?  As a general rule, most descriptions of God are analogies based on earthly relationships.  For instance, God is called a “king” because we can imagine him as some kind of authority figure. In other places God is called “father” or “savior”, which we can understand because everyone has a physical father, and many people have been “saved” from something at one time or another.

Every one of these description terms implies some kind of relationship.  In the case of a king, it is an authority figure, distant but powerful.  In the case of a father, it is still an authority but usually much closer, and if you have a good father it is usually much warmer, supportive and friendly.

To return to my original question, when Bildad tells Job that he should “implore the compassion of the Almighty”, what kind of relationship is he imagining?  Is Go a beneficent king to them, or a judge, or what?  From the text, it seems like Bildad’s primary emphasis is on the notion of justice (v. 3).  In particular, Bildad sees destruction as the natural consequence of sin (v. 4) and prosperity the consequence of righteousness.  God’s role is to uphold this system of justice by punishing the wicked and preserving the righteous.  In my opinion, I think Bildad sees this as “the way things should be” and that God is just precisely because he brings about the deserved consequences to all people, both good and bad.

In other places in the bible, we see God as a friend or father.  In this book, God is a judge, an impersonal arbiter of justice.  Job’s friends insist that God is fair, but nowhere do any of them say that God is friendly.  In the next chapter we will see Job place his relationship with God into a legal framework, and from that point of view there is actually a lot of similarity between how Job views God and how his friends view God.  In fact, I would say that the principle dispute in this book is whether God is fair; I’ll talk about it more when we get there.

In the meantime, Bildad thinks that God is fair and if only Job were to repent and turn to God, then God would restore him.

In the next chapter, Job answers.