JOB 6,7,8,18& 25 RELIGIOUS HUMAN TRADITION
RELIGIOUS HUMAN TRADITION
BILDAD
Job 6, 7, 8, 18 & 25
Taught by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
In Chapter 6, Job replies to Eliphaz in an outburst of emotion. He justified his despair by the magnitude of his reproach, requesting to be cut off, at the same time reproaching his friends. The misery of life broached two questions: Why does God deal with me in this manner? And why does He not pardon?
Job is disappointed in his friends. He longed for sympathy, not stinging reproof. He seems dazed. He knew full well that he was not a wicked man, yet his flesh was clothed with worms. He just could not understand. Even if he had sinned, it surely was not so heinous as to deserve such terrible punishments. Job prays that he might die!
Job’s answer is a magnificent and terrible outcry. Job declared that Eliphaz did not understand his cry because he did not know the pain. After crying out for death, Job then turned on his friends with reproaches of fine satire. He likened them to a brook in the desert to which the traveling caravans turned (Vs. 6:15). He then declared that his friends were nothing. Reproach began to merge into a fierce demand that, instead of generalization and delusion, there should be some definiteness in the charges that they made against him. There is majesty in this impatience with men who philosophize in the presence of agony.
Verse 25b: “What does your arguing reprove?” Foolish people like to argue and start arguments. Do you imagine to reprove words, and speeches of one that is desperate, which are as wind? Yea, you overwhelm the fatherless, and you dig a pit for your friends.
In chapter 7, Without waiting for their reply, Job broke out into a new lamentation, bitterer than the first. His heart of sorrow had been aggravated by the misunderstanding of his friends. There is first a great complaint concerning the stress and misery of life; and second a complaint directed against the Lord. “Man is but a hireling”, a servant whose labor issues in nothing, whose rest is disturbed with tossing… Nothing is satisfying because nothing is lasting… life for man is a weaver’s shuttle… wind… the look of the eye or a vanishing cloud… “I will complain” (7:1-7)
Job’s vision of God was blurred during these trying days. He asked why he must be tried every moment. But God patiently bore and waited, knowing that at the back of the complaint was an unshaken confidence, even though for the moment the surface was swept with the hurricanes of doubt blowing up out of the darkness.
In all this, Job does not bother to answer Eliphaz specifically, but continues to give vent to his anguish. A sick man should have pity on a friend and not all of this condemnation. As chapter 7 closes, Job asks God to leave him alone, to please forgive him, and to let him lie down and die:
Even the beasts make a cry of distress over their food when it is unpalatable (Job’s lot). His friends had become as a deceitful brook, black and frozen with ice! Job reminds Eliphaz that he had asked nothing of him or those with him. Words of uprightness carry some force and weight, but the arguing of Eliphaz had no power. Words, mere words…sound familiar? The three had settled that Job was a transgressor, so any sympathy shown to him would cause them to enter into his “sin”. From the three would-be-comforters, Job turns to God. His terrible nights of suffering do seem to be the keenest point of his complaint…those awful nights of tossing to and fro until the dawning of the day. When he goes to his bed, in hope of some relief from his pain, he is then scared by dreams and visions. I am assured that those dreams and visions were from satan and not from the Lord. He did not want to live in such warfare as this. So Job cried to God…if iniquity I know not of is the cause of all this suffering why do you not take it away? (7:21) “Why do you not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity? For now shall I sleep in the dust; and you shall seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.” Job returns to the question of “why?”
Chapter 8 is the first speech of Bildad the Shuhite---Religious Human Reasoning
Genesis 25:2 tells us that Shuah, who gave his name to the countryside or land from which Bildad came was the sixth son of Abraham by Katurah, whom he married after the death of Sarah.
The Hebrew word for “Bildad” (#1085) means “son of contention, Bel has loved, lord Adad, son of strife.”
The Hebrew word for “Shuah (#7747, 7744, 7743), means dell, to sink, bow down, incline, humble, sinking down in the mud, settling down, bowed down, despair, depressed, pit”
Bildad relied upon Religious Human Tradition, the philosophy and formal theology from the fathers (8: 8-10). He was a pillar of the “church” and was a champion of the “faith”. He was a valued and revered teacher. Bildad had no revelation and thus no answer for Job. He never thought for himself. Bildad sought to convince Job of his wrong from the teachings of the past.
The speeches of Bildad do not have the same air of courtesy as those of Eliphaz. Bildad is the forthright declaimer rather than the reflective reasoner. His opening speech is noticeably severer than that of Eliphaz. Much of his words are but a succession of traditional maxims or proverbs drawn from the “wisdom of the
His three speeches are easily marked. The first is an appeal; the second is a rebuke; the third is an evasion. His speeches are in Chapter 8, 18 and 25.
The first speech comes in chapter 8. It is in three parts:
- 8:2-7--- He appeals to appearances; that is, to the sudden deaths of Job’s children as indicating Divine judgment on them for sin (8:4), and to Job’s further trouble as therefore indicating that Job himself cannot be “pure and upright.”
- 8: 8-19—He appeals to tradition.
- 8: 20-22---He appeals to Job’s own intelligence, the force of which is “God will not cast away a perfect man” and therefore He will yet fill your mouth with laughter.” If Job is such a man!
In chapter 8, the disagreement between Job and his friends becomes wider in this first discourse of Bildad. He bluntly accuses Job of being a windbag, vehement but empty (8:2b). Moffatt’s translation---“wild and whirling words”---is very effective. Bildad is objective and analytical; as a result, he is a neat but superficial thinker. He is a moralist with a simple theology, based upon the traditions of the fathers.
He follows the general logic of the other “comforters.” God was punishing Job for his sins. He insists that God is just, and that if Job would turn to God, all would be well again.
This speech lack courtesy and gains in force. Again, no direct charge was made against Job. He was left to make his own deduction and application.
Bildad may be described as the very “humble” friend. He speaks the least of the three, and echoed the other two men. The devil whispered through Bildad to Job, “If you were pure and upright…” Bildad had a perfect reverence for Human Religious Tradition. He was only an “echo” and was content to take his knowledge second hand. (8:8-9) “For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare yourself for the search of their fathers; (For you are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.) No. We are more than that! (1 John 4:17) “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world.”
There is still this is the mentality of many today. So they sing, “We’ll understand it better by and by.” They do not know that we have the Mind of Christ! (Jn. 16:13): “Howbeit when the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come. 1 Cor. 2: 9-16). “But as it is written, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. But God has revealed them unto us by his spirit; for the spirit searches all things, year the deep things of God.”
After his appeal for tradition, Bildad draws for Job a picture of the path of the ones who forgets God. His illustrations are drawn from a small areas---as the withered grass, the spider’s web, the house, the garden, the dust; all showing that his sphere had probably been a very circumscribed one, and his mind and vision had remained correspondingly small.
There is one verse of prophesy in 8:7: “Though your beginning was small, yet your later end shall greatly increase.”
Bildad also encouraged Job. He is a kind man, and in his own way feels sorry for Job. He would like to give him a word of cheer. All that he has said about the fate of the godless is true, but if Job should be right with God after all, God will not cast him off, but will yet fill his mouth with laughter and shouting. His small and shallow mind is not capable of realizing the depths of a son of God with the high calling of Job.
Chapter 18 is Bildad’s second speech. True to form it, too, is straightforward. He rebukes the form of indignant personal questions. He rebukes the form of traditional moral maxims. He speaks with the determined “Yea” and “surely” at the beginning and the ending of the second part. He covers the same ground as Eliphaz’s speech in chapter 15. The only differences reflect the contrasting temperaments of the two men. Eliphaz is gentle, and a good pastor; Bildad, a traditionalist, is content with the old ideas, and has obviously failed to appreciate Job’s thoughts because they do not agree with his own. While Eliphaz emphasizes the mental worries of the wicked, Bildad focuses on their outward troubles.
Bildad harshly reproaches Job, and attempts to frighten him by describing the doom of the wicked. This should be a lesson to all preachers who try to frighten anyone in to repentance. He was wrong about Job, but he has a detailed description of the wicked.
Bildad returns to the charge. It is evident that he is annoyed. He was wounded at the wrongs done to him and his friends in that Job had treated them as “beasts” and as “unclean”. He was angry, moreover because he considered that Job’s attitude threatened the moral order with violence, and he reminded Job that stable things could not be changed for his sake.
He then plunges in to an elaborate declaration that the wicked are punished. This punishment he described in great dealt. He had described the circumstances through which Job had been passing as to all outward appearance; and finally said that such circumstances were those of the wicked.
Bildad has no patience with what he calls Job’s word snares and he cannot understand why Job thinks they are stupid as beasts. Does Job expect the world to stop for him? (18:4) “shall the earth be forsaken for you? And shall the rock be removed out of his place?” Bildad kicks a man when he is down. A speaker without ideas resorts to satire: “…the world reconstructed just to suite you?”
Poor Bildad once more attempts to reason with the obstinate Job, and is evidently a little hurt at Job’s vigorous language in reply to Zophar. Once more, Bildad’s illustrations are drawn from a very limited sphere. His own idea of blessing from God is prosperity in his “tent,” his family, his own personal circle, and in have a “name” in the “street” in which he lived! It was inevitable that Job should be misunderstood by such a man. How could Bildad comprehend the depth of surrender to God shown by Job? Even more, how could he understand God’s deepest purposes for His devoted servant in placing him in the crucible? The “traditions” of the fathers can’t help you with that! Job’s plight was a “NEW THING”.
I am getting ahead of myself, but Job 19:25: is so good in Job’s speech, that we will emphasize it over and over. Job’s audacious faith reaches its climax in the famous words, “I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES”. He leaps to this height from the state of despair caused by the reproaches of his friends, his devastation by God, and his sense of utter forsakenness. His certainty of final vindication shines all the more brightly when viewed against this background.
Bildad’s speech was common opinion of philosophers, who God is as a factor in a formula. Job’s point of view is totally different. He does not see God dealing with him through laws. He is vividly aware of God’s direct contact with him, and openly names Him as the sole agent of all that “happens.” Morality is no connecting link. Job cannot understand why God is now acting so completely out of character with what he has always trusted and believed. He must somehow recover his friendship and relationship by means which supersede the theological calculus of his three friends. He boldly claims God as his nearest relative! (That is a New Testament Revelation).
Chapter 25 is Bildad’s third and final speech.
The discussion is nearly exhausted. The brevity of Bildad’s final speech and the absence of a final speech by Zophar are indications that the friends are finally whipped and have run out of fuel. Bildad’s feeble ideas, which we have heard before, are the platitudes of theology common to the three.
Although his arguments were exhausted, Bildad presented a forceful description of what God is (25: 1-3), and what man is (25: 4-6). This is the shortest of the speeches. Bildad was through.
Bildad was not prepared to discuss the general truth of what had been said, but he made it perfectly evident that he had no sympathy with the personal application made by Job. The force of the speech is identical with that of Eliphaz, without argument. Bildad made it perfectly clear that, in his mind, the guilt of Job was established. He rested his case.
The question of HOW a man could be just before God is still upon the mind of Bildad. He ignores all that has now passed between Job and his other friends, and harks back to the questions propounded by the spirit-voice to Eliphaz.
25: 1-3 – “Dominion and fear are with Him, He makes Peace in His High Places (the most Holy Place is the realm of the peacemaker of Mt. 5:9) 11 Cor. 5: 17-21; Jas. 3: 16-17). Is there any number of his armies? And upon whom does not His light Arise? According to Bildad, puny man counts for nothing in the infinite space of God’s mind.
25: 4-6—“How then can ENOSH (“frail, mortal man”) be justified with EL? Or how can he be clean (“pure”) this is born of a woman” Behold even to the moon, and it shines not; yea, the stars are not pure in His sight. How much less ENOSH that is a worm (“maggot; to rot”) and the son of Adam, which is a maggot?” On this disgusting hopeless note, the words of Bildad end. Actually the three miserable comforters come to an end! However, we still will cover Zophar next week, then the words of Job especially his speech in chapter 26, Then Elihu and close with the Words of the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, Our Kinsman Redeemer.
There are no other persons named until Elihu appears on the scene in chapter 32. the context of Elihu’s speeches is the problem of Pain. He points out the incorrect answers of the three friends and gives an enlightened answer. In chapter 38, we will hear God’s perfect answer.
Elihu was the messenger of God. (Jer. 1: 4-10) He possessed a spiritual discernment unknown by the older men. Thus God hides his secrets from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes. (Matt. 11:25). It is pleasant that we will notice Elihu’s modesty and tact in his speaking.
Elihu proceeds to instruct Job that God speaks in two different ways”
33: 14-18: - (1) By the direct inner teaching of the Holy Spirit in the heart (“a dream in a vision of the night”). This is in direct contrast with Eliphaz’s visitation of a demonic spirit.
33: 19-22 --- (2) By being placed in the school of suffering and chastening with pain as God deals with His servants. “With God, speaking is dong, and He only explains His designs by putting the soul in the crucible.” Guyon
The servant of God must be taught to rejoice in the Will of God, rather than the service of God and to glory in weakness as a condition for knowing the Divine strength brought to its full development of power. The faithful servant of God must even be willing to suffer many things for the sake of being fitted for ministry to others; even as it is written that Jesus Christ Himself is our great High Priest, is touched with the feelings of our weaknesses (Heb. 5: 1-5; 7:26), because on earth he was in all points tried even as those He came to save. (1 Cor. 2: 3-5). Compassion is the key to His More Excellent Ministry, and we are to be like him!
Heb. 4: 14-16: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so also for himself, to offer for sin. And no man takes this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest; but he that said unto him, You are my Son, to day have I begotten you.”
Taught by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom