Chapters 4—11
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Scripture Reading: Job 8
Before we come to Bildad's rebuttal in chapter eight, I would like to say something further concerning Job's self-vindication in chapters six and seven. Job's vindication of himself in these chapters is an extract of the whole book. The entire book of Job is actually a kind of vindication.
As he vindicated himself, Job stated his grievances, challenged God, blamed his friends, justified himself, and expressed that he had the common knowledge of the vanity and end of human life. Job was challenging God and his friends to give him an answer. Actually, the entire book of Job, which has become a big problem to many Christians, needs an answer. As we will see, the needed answer is found not in the book of Job but in the New Testament.
After stating his grievances, longing for his vexation to be weighed and his ruin to be lifted onto the scales together with it (6:2), Job challenged God concerning how much God would require of him. Job seemed to be saying, "God, I have done what You have required me to do. What else do You want? What do You want me to be, and what do You want me to do? Because You did not tell me these things, I am puzzled." When we come to chapter nine, we will see that Job wanted an opportunity to present his "case" before God in "court," with himself as the plaintiff and God as the defendant. However, Job expected that God, who is almighty and wise, would win the case. As a result, Job felt that he had no way out of his situation.
After challenging God, Job turned to his friends, blaming them for not showing kindness to him, who was fainting under the striking of God. Job seemed to be saying to them, "Your way is not right. You reprove me, condemn me, and despise me. This is not love, and this is not kindness. I need direction. You should tell me what my direction should be. Tell me where I should go and what I should do."
Next Job turned to himself, justifying himself by saying that he was not wrong in anything. He expressed that he had the common knowledge of the struggle, the vanity, the trouble, the suffering, and the end of human life. Regarding this, he felt that he knew more than his friends did. Eventually, Job said that he loathed life and indicated that he no longer had any taste for life. Since there was no answer to his situation, Job concluded that the only thing for him to do was to die.
Job and his friends were in the wrong realm. They were in the realm of good and evil, in the realm of promoting man's integrity. They needed to get into the right realm, the realm of the tree of life. They needed to come back to the tree of life. The tree of life was their answer.
Instead of trying to attain to the peak of integrity, Job needed to do his best to pursue God, to pursue Christ the person directly. Job's direction should have been toward that peak, not toward the peak of human integrity. This is the answer to Job and his friends regarding the purpose of Job's sufferings.
Let us now go on to consider Bildad's rebuttal to Job in chapter eight.
In the first round of the debates between Job and his friends, the second one to rebut Job was Bildad, who complained that Job's speaking was too long, like a mighty wind (8:1-2). Bildad's speaking was a rebuttal to Job's vindication of himself.
Bildad claimed that all the disasters and the plague on Job were not God's perverting of justice or the Almighty's perverting of righteousness (v. 3). Bildad implied that Job had condemned God, claiming that God had perverted justice concerning him. Bildad told Job that God would never do such a thing.
Bildad thought that Job's children might have sinned against God and that God delivered them into the hand of their transgression (v. 4). To be fair, Bildad might have had some ground to say this, since Job's children were killed while they were feasting and drinking wine.
Bildad believed that if Job sought God earnestly and made supplication unto the Almighty, and if Job was pure and upright, then surely God would rouse Himself for him and restore well-being to his righteous habitation, including his family. Though his beginning was small, his end would be very great (vv. 5-7). It is hard to say what was Bildad's standard of purity and uprightness. His speaking was according to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. While Bildad was speaking, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was growing.
Bildad went on to teach Job to inquire of the former generations and to attend to what their fathers had sought out, that they might teach him (vv. 8-10). Bildad's word was full of disrespect and despising.
Bildad warned Job that all who forget God wither like papyrus and reeds. He said that the hope of the profane perishes, whose confidence is cut off and whose trust is a spider's web. He leans upon his house, but it will not stand. He holds fast to it, but it will not endure (vv. 11-19). This was the speaking not of a learned person but of one who was childish, foolish, and in darkness.
Bildad continued by declaring to Job that God will not reject a perfect man, nor will He support evildoers. God, Bildad said, would fill Job's mouth with laughter and his lips with shouting. Those who hated Job would be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked would be no more (vv. 20-22). Once again, Bildad spoke vain words.
Bildad's logic concerning man's relationship with God was even the more built upon good and evil, right and wrong, absolutely in the principle of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, altogether according to the human, ethical concept of fallen man. In his rebuttal there was no flavor of being enlightened in the divine revelation and no taste of being spiritual in the divine life. He was altogether in darkness and in the vanity of man's ethics. His rebuttal was utterly powerless to convince Job, who was higher in things concerning God than his contemporaries.
Even though Job was higher in such things than he was, Bildad presumed to rebuke him, to warn him, to teach him, to educate him, and to give him instructions. Bildad could do this because he was in darkness. Job was also in darkness, daring to challenge God, and this opened the way for his friends to speak in darkness. Thus, both Job and his friends were in darkness.
