NOTES for Job 18:1-21

Bildad's speech, delivered in response to Job's accusations, is the best proof that he, like the other two friends taking part in the sufferer's conversation, completely fails to understand what is happening. It is devoted entirely to the same theme of the fate of the wicked (vv. 5-21), which Eliphaz and Zophar have already touched on more than once in the conversation. But Bildad begins his speech with a call to speak thoughtfully and not to become like animals, humiliating one another in their own eyes (vv. 2-3). He is plainly quite sure that Job speaks bitter words only because his sufferings are too great and he cannot restrain himself. He attributes Job's words to anger (v. 4). As we can see, Job was not very mistaken when he accused his friends of hypocrisy.

Of course, in this case we are not dealing with ordinary hypocrisy, when people act hypocritically on purpose. In the situation of Job's friends, it would be more accurate to speak of fear, which keeps a person from seeing what he does not want to see. Job's friends are afraid to admit to themselves that Job may be right, both in his appeals to God and in the harsh words he addresses to them, his friends. The issue is not that they are afraid of being wrong. The issue is that if Job is right, then all their arguments are truly worthless. And then all their religiosity is worthless too, along with the tradition they defend, and indeed their whole life, founded on that religiosity and that tradition. Meanwhile, Job's friends appear to be beginning to understand that all their arguments miss the point.

They already sense that Job may be right about the seriousness of his situation and the light-mindedness of their attitude toward him. And then the last argument comes into play: Job's friends begin to say about him that what he said was spoken in the heat of the moment and without thought, now comforting not so much their suffering friend as themselves. Indeed, is it worth paying attention to words spoken in the heat of pain, offense, or anger? God will not pay attention to such words either; He will not count them against a righteous man. Bildad, as we can see, offers an elegant solution that offends no one: let us consider everything Job said to have been said rashly, out of anger caused by pain and grief, and let us end this pointless argument. Everything is fine. The wicked really will receive from God what they deserve, but Job will not be among them, because he will no longer utter thoughtless speeches or ask God bold questions. Job is righteous, and everything will be fine.

The discussion between Job and his friends gradually turns into a quarrel; the reproaches grow ever stronger. Now the offended Bildad demands an end to Job's blasphemous speeches. He has taken Job's words as an affront to his dignity and therefore exclaims: ‘Why do you treat us like four-footed beasts?’ Bildad then asks Job: ‘Why are you angry?’ He has heard nothing in Job's speeches but anger! The next phrase, ‘Must the earth be emptied for your sake?’, is not entirely clear in the Synodal translation; the modern translation, as well as the Septuagint and the Slavonic translation that follows it, speak more clearly and harshly. ‘If you die, will the world beneath heaven no longer be inhabited?’ In other words, Bildad asks: ‘Will your death empty the earth? What will change because you suffer and die?’

This is a rhetorical question, obviously implying a negative answer. Such, it turns out, is the bleakness and mercilessness of his outlook. Job's suffering and death will change nothing in the world; everything will remain in its place. The question of the meaning of suffering is irrelevant to Bildad because he sees nothing particularly bad in suffering and death. The biblical narrator, conveying God's will for the human beings he has created, says: ‘Fill the earth’—bring the fullness of life to the earth. The psalmist asks in awe: ‘What is man, that you remember him, and the son of man, that you visit him?’ The Lord Jesus Christ weeps for the dead Lazarus. But Bildad says: ‘There is no need to get so worked up; your death does not matter.’ The book's author does not say whether Bildad applies this view only to others or also to himself. The latter is more likely, since this outlook was widespread in Old Testament times.

The monstrous nature of this outlook cannot fail to strike the reader. Here the fundamentally important revelation that the author of Job brings to humanity becomes especially clear. He constructs the narrative so that the reader cannot help agreeing with Job, who, perhaps unconsciously, starts from the conviction that a human being's destruction is an irreparable tragedy. Every person matters to God and to his design for the world, and a unique place in the world is prepared for each. That is why the suffering and death of any person damage the world; that is why everyone's spiritual life matters before the Creator. The revelation of the value of the person and of their independence before God has a central place in the Book of Job. This is why, in the story, Job is alone, while his friends are many and none of them thinks independently.

The main part of Bildad's speech, like Eliphaz's preceding speech, is devoted to a ‘poem on the destruction of the wicked.’ Again and again, Bildad vividly describes how badly the lawless fare on earth. This seems not to be a discussion of real life but some kind of magical incantation, whose essence, as with all incantations, is ‘Keep it away from me.’ Bad people suffer, Bildad says. The implication is that he is good because he does not suffer as Job does; and since he is good, there is no reason for him to suffer in the future either... ‘I thank you, Lord, that I am not like this tax collector’: that is what the speeches of Job's friends recall.

God's revelation in the Old Testament says that the righteous shall live by faith, while the soul of the lawless shall be cut off from their people. In keeping with the spirit of their age, Job's friends understand this not merely literally but as directly applying to earthly well-being, to earthly life. Is this what the Lord means? In Deuteronomy, the first book in the whole Bible to become canonical Holy Scripture, the Lord speaks through Moses these great words about what real human life is: ‘I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live, that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice and cleave to him; for in this are your life and the length of your days’ (Deut. 30:19–20). For God, human life consists in these three things: loving the Lord, obeying him and cleaving to him, that is, seeking the closest possible communion with God. For Bildad, life consists in well-being. What God calls life is compatible with worldly success and with tragedy: the Son of God died on the Cross so that, even in death itself, we should not be separated from him but could cleave to him. What Bildad calls life is incompatible with any hardship.

Bildad speaks not of what actually exists in life but of what, in his opinion, ought to exist. His words can be understood as an allegory of how terrible, barren and meaningless separation from God is; then his speech becomes entirely apt. But Bildad himself tries to prove that his words are literally true, and so they conflict with life, in which it is often precisely the villains who prosper while the righteous bear all the world's sorrows.