Bildad affirms, that if Job was innocent, he would be immediately restored to his former splendor, on his making supplication to the Almighty. He shews that the wicked is like the bulrush, which withers as soon as it is sprung up.
Before Christ 1645.
Job 8:1. Then answered Bildad the Shuhite— Bildad, whose sentiments are the same with those of the preceding friend, now comes on to the attack, and tells Job, that his general asseverations of innocence are of no avail; that to deny his guilt, was to charge the Almighty with injustice; Job 8:2-3 that if he would not yield to the argument of Eliphaz, drawn from his experience, and strengthened by revelation, he would do well to pay respect to the general experience of mankind, as handed down by tradition; where he would find it established, as a certain truth, that misery was the infallible consequence of wickedness; Job 8:8-20 that therefore they could not argue wrong, who inferred from actual misery antecedent guilt; and, though he might urge that these calamities were fallen on him on account of his children's wickedness, yet he only deceived himself; for in that case God might indeed have chastised them for their crimes; but he would by no means have destroyed the innocent with the guilty; Job 8:4-7. He would rather have heaped his blessings on the innocent person, that the contrast might have vindicated his providence. He would even have wrought a miracle for the preservation or restoration of such a person: and he concludes, that since, from the known attributes of God, it was impossible he should cut off the innocent, or suffer the guilty to go free, and as no interposition of Providence had happened in his behalf, he thought him in a likely way, by his utter destruction, to prove a terrible example of the truth of that principle which they had urged against him. Heath.