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Bildad goes right back to Eliphaz's argument: Why do you argue (8:2), Can God be wrong (8:3)? In short, unvarnished, blunt dialogue he continues: ‘your children sinned and were killed’ (8:4), ‘now you must go to God in supplication’ (8:5). Bildad is confident that they have it right, “If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee” (8:6). Where Eliphaz is indirect, the children of ‘the foolish’ are crushed (5:3-4), Bildad is blunt: “If your children have sinned against Him, and He have cast them away for their transgression...” (8:4). Commentator Andrew Blackwood Jr. suggests the three friends were well-intentioned, thoughtful men who spoke too soon, said too much, and said the wrong things (Smith, page 39).
Many commentators like to contrast the three friends, and so I will throw in my own gloss on the dialog with the caveat that the friends are all quite similar and such divisions are somewhat artificial. Eliphaz is emotional. When he has his dream, he is sure that he has received a prophetic insight. He is the charismatic among them. Bildad is the strength of will. He is solid and moral, a man of action, part of the ‘moral majority.’ Having arrived at a consensus with his friends, he charges ahead with no diplomatic niceties. Zophar, we will see, approaches from the head. He is cold and aloof. He is an amateur theologian. While these three characters have different personalities, the fact that they are not clearly separated as in a Bunyan tale, suggests that the differences are real and not didactic. The writer is describing real personalities and not arguments. Although the entire book of Job is an extended series of dialogs, there is never a sense of sophisticated argument.
Whereas Eliphaz claimed visions and experience as his guide, Bildad appeals to the wisdom of tradition for understanding (8:8-10). We too often forget the importance of tradition as a guide, in our rush to invent a new destiny, a new righteousness. “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee” (Deut. 32:7). Unfortunately, tradition is a limited resource. Bildad is not plugged into the Holy Spirit so his faith relies on yesterday's Manna. Job's current predicament defies his present understanding, and his tradition has become a hindrance, not a help.
At the heart of it, Bildad is not relying on God, but on creed. Job wrestles with his creed, but Bildad stubbornly clings to it, until he imagines all sorts of wickedness. For Job his creed has been hollowed out. It is an empty shell through which the wind blows with a haunting cry signifying nothing. He is, in Oswald Chambers’ term, ‘baffled’.
Oswald Chambers lectured on the book of Job to soldiers in the trenches of the “Great War”. Theses men understood the limitation of creed. “During this war many a man has come to find the difference between his creed and God. At first a man imagines he has backslidden because he has lost belief in his beliefs, but later on he finds he has gained God, that is, he has come across reality. If reality is not to be found in God, then God is not found anywhere. If God is only a creed or a statement of religious belief, then He is not real; but if God is, as the book of Job brings to light, One with whom an individual gets into personal contact in other ways than by his intellect, then anyone who touches the reality of things, touches God” (Chambers 1990, 50-51).
Unfortunately Job is now face to face with the Holy terror of God. All too many men, faced with the horror of just how abased the human condition can go without God, accused God and turned their back. Nietzsche, proclaimed the death of God and went mad. In the midst of his own conflagration, Job looks to find the glory of God. He will find it, or should I say it will find him.
“Can the flag [rushes] grow without water?” (8:11) asks Bildad, “the hope of the godless will perish” (8:13). Bildad exhorts Job, God is the only foundation (8:11-22). If Job, whose faithfulness is amazing, is godless, none of us have any hope.
It is all too easy to dismiss Bildad as Job does. It takes a truly meek spirit to see truth in a rebuke, especially if some of the rebuke is misplaced or flat wrong. Look again. There is something godless in Job. He has lost confidence in God (6:4) and he is begging for death (6:9). The godless, “Whose hope shall be cut off” (8:14), or “Whose confidence is fragile”, reads the NASB, will lose their hope. “So are the paths of all that forget God... whose trust shall be a spider's web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand” (8:13-15).
Bildad illustrates the man of shallow faith: “He is like a well-watered plant in the sunshine, spreading its shoots over the garden; it entwines its roots around a pile of rocks and looks for a place among the stones. But when it is torn from its spot, that place disowns it and says, ‘I never saw you’” (8:16-18, NIV). The image is of lush greenery coming from a poor root system. It will not last. The Septuagint calls it a place “in the midst of flints” (Barnes, note on 8:17). Jesus uses this imagery in the parable of the sower. David uses this image in Psalm 37: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found” (Ps. 37:35-36). Bildad is describing someone whose faith is alive when everything is going well, but should the comfortable life come to an end, faith dissolves. He raises an important question, is faith that has never been tried in the fire, faith at all?
Bildad's prediction is dire for those whose faith fails. The earth itself will turn its back on the wicked: “If he destroy him from his place, then it shall deny him, saying, I have not seen thee” (8:18). “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:22-23, NASB).
There is a profound weakness at the heart of Job's faith. His covenant with God appears to be broken. It is not broken. Job remains steadfastly facing God. But Job continues to question God, to challenge Him to appear and show Job his error. Job continues to wait on God right through his last speech, finishing like Luther, “here I stand, I can do no more”: “Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book” (31:35).
Bildad is making some profound points in beautifully phrased verse. He is painting images which will be echoed in the Psalms, by Isaiah and even Jesus. Unfortunately his words are horribly out of season. Job could not have any more thrown at him and yet he clings to his faith in God despite everything. His circumstances have left him frustrated and confused, but his roots are extraordinarily deep. Job is not going to dry up and blow away.
Bildad assures Job (and himself) that “God will not cast away a perfect man” (8:20). This is not reassurance for Job, but continued exhortation to get right with God, i.e., if you were perfect, God would not discard you. Job becomes quite sure that God does intend to cast him away (30:23). We know that Satan has specific instructions that he may not kill Job (2:6). Although he is prohibited from killing Job, Satan does want to give Job the impression that he is being disgarded “without any regard” (4:19-21).
It is understandable that Job has a difficult time hearing from Bildad. Bildad's message is filled with judgments against Job. If Eliphaz lacked sympathy, Bildad is brutal. He takes the ‘God said it, and that settles it approach’ without the slightest consideration that the circumstances might not be as he thinks. Thankfully, he is brief.
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