Chapters 12—20
(3)
Scripture Reading: Job 16; Job 17; Job 18
In this message we will cover chapters sixteen through eighteen.
According to 16:1-6 Job rejected his friends' word. Although Job's friends had come to him for the purpose of comforting him, he regarded them as "troubling comforters," and he called their words "words of wind." He asked them, "What has provoked you that you so respond?" (v. 3b). The answer is that they were provoked by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In verses 4 and 5 Job continued, "I also could speak like you,/If your soul were in my soul's stead;/I could join my words together against you / And shake my head at you. /I could strengthen you with my mouth,/And the movement of my lips would mitigate your pain." Job realized that his friends' word was vanity, and he rejected it.
It was Job's desire that God would adjudicate for him in his case in the painful situation caused by God (16:7—17:16).
Job complained that God had worn him out and had desolated all his company, though there was no violence in his hands and his prayer was pure (16:7-17). Job went so far as to say that God had torn him to pieces, had delivered him over to the unjust and cast him down into the hands of the wicked, had broken him apart, had taken him by the neck and dashed him to pieces, and had set him up as His target. Thus, Job's face was reddened with weeping, and on his eyelids was the shadow of death.
Job cried to the earth not to cover his blood and not to frustrate his crying out (v. 18). Then he said, "Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven,/And He who vouches for me is in the heights./My friends deride me;/My eye pours out tears to God,/That He would adjudicate for a man in his case with God/And for a son of man in his case with his neighbor" (vv. 19-21). Here we see that Job would not release God, that he would not let God go. Instead, Job expressed his desire that God would adjudicate for him in his case. Job's contending here indicates that he expected to have a time to plead with God concerning his case.
Job said that his spirit was broken, that his days were extinct, and that the graveyard was ready for him (17:1). Job went on to say that his mockers were provoking him, even though he was upright, righteous, and held fast to his way more strongly (vv. 2-16). In verse 9 Job declared, "Yet the righteous man will hold fast to his way,/And he whose hands are clean will wax yet stronger." Here Job was saying that he was a righteous man who held fast to his way.
In chapter eighteen we have Bildad's rebuke and warning.
In his rebuke of Job (vv. 1-4), Bildad asked him how long he would hunt for words. Then Bildad inquired of Job, "Why are we considered to be like beasts/And have become unclean in your eyes?" (v. 3). This indicates that Job thought that his friends were like beasts. Bildad continued by asking Job if the earth would be forsaken for his sake.
The remainder of chapter eighteen consists of Bildad's warning with the pitiful end of the wicked. Bildad declared, "Indeed the light of the wicked goes out,/And the flame of his fire does not shine./The light is darkness in his tent,/And his lamp above him goes out" (vv. 5-6). Regarding the wicked, Bildad went on to say that terrors frighten him all around, that his strength is famished, that calamity is prepared at his side, that he is rooted out of his tent, that brimstone is scattered upon his habitation, that the memory of him perishes from the earth, that he is thrust out from the light to the darkness and is driven from the world, and that he has no posterity and no progeny among his people. Then Bildad concluded, "Surely these are the dwellings of the unjust,/And this is the place of him who does not know God" (v. 21). Bildad tried to give advice, but his words were words of waste. His logic and his warning were based on the principle of good and evil.
