The Wisdom of the Ancients. Bildad recalls Job to tradition as enshrined in the proverbs of the fathers (Job 8:8). Authority belongs to the voice of the past (Job 8:9). The respect which our age has for books, each of which is collected from a hundred older ones, a non-literary civilisation has for tradition and usage. Bildad is conscious of his limitation, but ascribes the same also to all others, whom, as mediocrity is wont to do, he holds without hesitation as his equals: a common combination of modesty and unconscious shamelessness (Duhm).
With Job 8:11 begin the wise sayings of the ancients. These maxims of the ancient world are clothed in rich and gorgeous similes drawn from the luxuriant plant life of the sultry East (Davidson). It is noteworthy that the imagery of Job 8:11 is Egyptian. The rush is (as mg.) the papyrus. It grows 12 feet high; but to do this requires mire in which to grow. The flag is the Nile grass. An Egyptian word (ahu) is used, which is found only twice elsewhere in OT (Genesis 4:12; Genesis 4:18). It is clear that the poet was acquainted with Egypt. He probably means to represent Bildad as viewing Egypt as the source of the oldest Wisdom Job 8:13 is Bildad's application; cf. Eliphaz (Job 5:3), also Psalms 37:36 f. The godless man shall perish. His confidence shall give way like a spider's web (Job 8:14) (lit. house; cf. the use of the latter word in Job 8:15). In the last the flimsiness of the spider's house is proverbial. Davidson quotes Koran (29:40): Verily the frailest of houses is the spider's house. With Job 8:16 f, we have a new figure, that of a spreading luxuriant plant, suddenly destroyed, so that not a trace of it is left. The lesson is the same as before.
Job 8:13. Instead of paths (orhoth) read aharitb, and translate, Such is the end of all that forget God.
Job 8:17 is difficult. Instead of heap we might translate spring. The meaning of the second line is very uncertain. Duhm, slightly emending the text (after LXX), translates, Its roots are twined about the spring, it lives in a house of stones. The meaning is then that the plant has established itself in the best place in the garden, the stone building over the spring, growing upon its walls, and surpasses in its growth all other plants in the garden rooted in their beds of earth.