Job 8:4

When Job’s three friends heard of his trouble, they came to comfort him (Job 2:11). Eliphaz spoke first (Job 4–5), hinting and then saying more plainly that Job’s suffering came from hidden sin. Job answered with the raw lament of Job 6–7, where he longed for death, questioned God’s dealings with him and said, “Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 7:11). Now Bildad takes his turn, and his speech fills Job 8. It and Job’s reply in chapters 9 and 10 make up the second exchange of the first round of speeches, which runs Eliphaz, Job, Bildad, Job, Zophar, Job.

The verb “answered”, ʻânâh, is the ordinary word for answering or responding, and what follows is a rebuttal of all that Job has just said. Bildad is named in full, with his people. The origin of the name Bildad is uncertain. Some take it as “Bel is lord”, and others as “son of contention” or “son of love”. “Shuhite”, Shûwchîy, is widely taken to mean a descendant of Shuah, one of the sons Keturah bore to Abraham (Genesis 25:2). That would make Bildad a man of an Arabian people, one of the men of the east who were known for their wisdom.

Bildad speaks for that wisdom as he understands it. Like Eliphaz before him and Zophar after him, he holds that God always rewards the righteous with prosperity and punishes the wicked with suffering, so that a man’s troubles show what he has done. We have heard what was said in heaven, where the LORD himself said of Job, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (Job 1:8). Every word Bildad says about Job’s guilt is spoken against that verdict, and that gives his speech its sad irony.

Bildad opens with two questions that rebuke more than they ask. “How long wilt thou speak these things?” The verb mâlal simply means to speak, say or utter, and “these things” are Job’s laments, complaints and challenges to God in the two chapters before. The second line repeats the first in stronger terms: “how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?” The words “be like” are supplied in the KJV, and the Hebrew sets the picture down bare.

The wind is rûwach, a word that means wind, breath or spirit, and the adjective kabbîyr means great, mighty or much. A great wind is loud and forceful and leaves only disturbance behind, so Bildad is calling Job’s speech bluster, a storm of noise with no truth or wisdom in it. Wise men were expected to speak in a measured and orderly way, and Job’s cries of pain struck Bildad as disorderly, excessive and close to blasphemy. He heard rebellion where there was anguish.

Bildad meant well in his way. He believed that if Job would stop complaining and admit his sin, God would restore him (Job 8:5–6), and his harshness came from that conviction. Yet his first words are the hasty kind Scripture warns against. “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin” (Proverbs 10:19), and James tells us to be “swift to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19). “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21), and Bildad’s tongue wounds a man who has already lost everything. In the end it is the friends whom the LORD rebukes (Job 42:7).

“Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?” This question is the foundation of Bildad’s whole speech. It expects one answer, and Bildad means it as a firm statement that God always judges rightly.

The two lines say the same thing twice in different words, which makes the point stronger. The first name, ʼêl, means God and also carries the sense of strength and might. The second, Shadday, is the title “the Almighty”, which may mean “the All-Sufficient One”, though its exact meaning is unsure. The verb repeated in both lines is ʻâvath, to bend, make crooked or wrest, and in a court of law to falsify or subvert. Its objects are mishpâṭ, a verdict or sentence and so the whole work of judging, and tsedeq, rightness, righteousness and justice in conduct and in judgment. So the verse asks whether the mighty God would ever twist a verdict or bend what is right, and the answer is plain.

“If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression;” Bildad says this to a father whose children have all died. “Sinned” is châṭâʼ, the common word for sin, which at root means to miss or fall short, and here it means a moral failing against God. “Transgression” is peshaʻ, rebellion, an act by which someone defies an authority. “Cast them away” is shâlach, to send or send away, so Bildad pictures God sending them off by his judgment for their rebellion. He puts it with an “if”, and he treats it as settled.

The verse is also an accusation of Job. If his children died for their sin, then Job’s own losses must come from his. Zophar will press the same charge in his turn (Job 11:4–6).

“If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty;” The verb behind “seek ... betimes” is shâchar, which is tied to the dawn and means to be up early at a task, and so to seek earnestly. “Betimes” is old English for early or promptly. Bildad is urging Job to make seeking God his first and most urgent business, as a man rises at dawn for something that matters above all else.

“Make thy supplication” is chânan, which means to show favour, to bend in kindness to someone lower, and when used of asking, to implore someone’s favour by petition. Supplication is a humble plea for grace from someone who knows his need. It is addressed to the Almighty, Shadday again, a name the book of Job uses more than any other book of the Bible. Bildad names him to stress that the God Job must appeal to has power to restore him.

The “if” opens a bargain that the next two verses complete: seek God, and he will restore you. Underneath the advice lies a charge, that Job has not yet sought God earnestly or humbly enough.

“If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.” “Pure” is zak, clear, clean or pure, here meaning moral cleanness and innocence before God. “Upright”, yashar, speaks of integrity and straightness of life. Bildad’s “if” implies that Job is neither, and yet “upright” is the very word the LORD used of Job in the first chapter.

“Surely now he would awake for thee” promises a swift and certain answer. The verb ʻûwr means to wake, rouse oneself or stir up. Bildad speaks of God in human terms, as though he were asleep to Job’s trouble and would rouse himself to act for Job the moment Job met the condition.

“The habitation of thy righteousness” is the home of a righteous man, Job’s household, family and whole life. Nâveh means a dwelling or abode, and it can also mean a pasture or the haunt of wild animals. “Make ... prosperous” is shâlam, a verb whose range covers being safe and whole, being completed and at peace, and making good what was lost. Bildad promises that God would make Job’s home whole again and reverse all his calamities.

“Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.” The verse sets two ends of a life against each other. “Beginning” is rêʼshîyth, the first in time or order. “Small” is mitsʻâr, something little, few or of small account. “Latter end” is ʼachărîyth, the last part, the end or future of a thing, and it can mean the outcome or a man’s posterity. “Greatly” is mᵉʼôd, very, greatly or exceedingly, and “increase” is sâgâh, to grow or become great. In Bildad’s mouth the small beginning is where Job now stands, stripped of children, wealth, health and standing, and the promise is of a future that grows far beyond what was lost.

Bildad’s words came true, on grounds he never imagined. After God spoke from the whirlwind and Job humbled himself before him (Job 42:1–6), the LORD rebuked the friends and restored Job: “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12). The restoration came as God’s gift to a man who had been righteous all along.

The pattern of a small start and a great end runs through Scripture. God fed Israel with manna in the wilderness “that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). Through Zechariah he asks, “For who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zechariah 4:10), and through Isaiah he promises, “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation” (Isaiah 60:22).

Bildad’s system leaves room only for the guilty to suffer. Christ is the answer to it. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he suffered with no sin of his own, bearing our griefs and wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:4–5). Bildad said Job’s children were cast away for their transgression. Christ on the cross cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), forsaken for ours, so that we who were far off “are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

At the cross God’s justice stays perfectly straight, as Bildad insisted, and it is satisfied in a way Bildad could never have pictured, so that God is “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–2). The same Christ will one day judge, for the Father “hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man” (John 5:27).

Where Bildad offered accusation, Christ offers sympathy, for he “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Bildad called Job’s words wind, and Christ is the Word made flesh (John 1:14), who said, “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). In him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), and “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Christ’s own life is the truest small beginning and great latter end. He humbled himself to death on a cross, and God highly exalted him and gave him a name above every name (Philippians 2:8–11). His kingdom is like a mustard seed that grows into the greatest of herbs (Matthew 13:31–32), and its end is the new heaven and new earth, where God dwells with his people and makes all things new (Revelation 21:1–7).

Bildad came as a friend, and his speech shows how a true thing said at the wrong time and on a false assumption can crush someone already broken. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6), and a faithful friend wounds only with the truth. Bildad’s truth about God was right, and his reading of Job was wrong.

When someone we love is suffering, we can begin where Job’s friends began, by coming to be with them, and stay there longer than they did. We can listen before we explain, leave room for grief and hard questions, and keep from naming a sin we cannot see. Bildad’s best counsel still stands for them and for us: seek God early and plead with him for his favour. He is just in all his ways, he hears his people, and he knows how to bless a latter end.