Job 18:2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

How long will it be ere you wake an end How long shall we continue this dispute? Why do not you, my brethren, give over discoursing with Job, who is so transported by his passions, as not to be fit to be discoursed with? At least, forbear to proceed till both you and he shall better understand the subject? For, if Bildad be considered as addressing himself to his two companions, he must have meant to reprove them for making use of too long discourses, and to advise them first to consider the subject well, and then to speak directly to the purpose. But many commentators understand him as addressing Job; using here, as also Job 18:3, the plural number, according to the common idiom of the eastern language: which was to speak thus to, or of one person, especially if he were of great eminence. In this case he must have intended to censure Job for puzzling the cause with cavils and exceptions, and to call upon him to produce a plain instance, in which a righteous man was known to have had punishment inflicted on him, or else to own the truth of the established maxim, that punishment was a sure mark of wickedness. Mark, and afterward we will speak Consider the matter better, and then we shall speak concerning it to more advantage. Or, inform us: Hebrew תבינו, tabinu, make us to understand. Seeing thou lookest upon us as ignorant and brutish men, as it follows, Job 18:3, do thou instruct and inform us. Cease cavilling, and produce thy strong reasons, that we may consider and yield to their weight, or answer them.