Then answered Bildad the Shuhite.
Bildad’s unsympathetic speech
Bildad grasps at once, as we say, the nettle. He is quite sure that he has the key to the secret of the distribution among mankind of misery and happiness. It is a very simple solution. It is the doctrine that untimely death, sickness, adversity in every form, are alike signs of God’s anger; that they visit mankind with unerring discrimination; are all what we call “judgments”; are penalties, i.e., or chastisements, meant either simply to vindicate the broken law, or else to warn and reclaim the sinner. And so, in what we feel to be harsh and unfeeling terms, he applies at once this principle, like unsparing cautery, to the wounds of his friend. Bildad tries to overwhelm the restless and presumptuous audacity of Job with a hoard of maxims and metaphors drawn from the storehouse of the “wisdom of the ancients.” He puts them forward in a form that may remind us for a moment of the Book of Proverbs. “As the tall bulrush or the soaring reed grass dies down faster than it shot up, when water is withdrawn, so falls and withers the short-lived prosperity of the forgetters of God. The spider’s web, frailest of tenements, is the world-old type of the hopes which the ungodly builds.” The second friend is emphasising what the first had hinted. “There are no mysteries at all, no puzzles in human life,” the friends say. “Suffering is, in each and every case, the consequence of ill-doing. God’s righteousness is absolute. It is to be seen at every turn in the experience of life. All this impatient, fretful, writhing under, or at the sight of pain and loss, is a sign of something morally wrong, of want of faith in Divine justice. Believe this, Job; act on it, and all thy troubles will be over; God will be once more thy friend--till then He cannot be.” (Dean Bradley.)
Bildad’s first speech
I. A reproof that is severe. “How long wilt thou speak these things?” Job had poured forth language that seemed as wild and tempestuous as the language of a man in a passion. But such language ought to have been considered in relation to his physical anguish and mental distress. Great suffering destroys the mental equilibrium.
II. A doctrine what is unquestionable. “Doth God pervert judgment?” The interrogatory is a strong way of putting the affirmative; namely, that God is absolutely just, and that He never deviates from the right.
III. An implication that is unkind. “If thy children have sinned against Him, and He have cast them away for their transgression.” Surely it was excessively heartless even to hint such things to the broken-hearted father.
IV. A policy that is Divine. “If thou wouldst seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication unto the Almighty.” Bildad recommends that this policy should be attended to at once, and in a proper spirit. He affirms that if this policy be thus attended to, the Almighty would mercifully interpose.
V. An authority not to be trusted. “Inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers.” He appeals to antiquity to confirm what he has advanced. Two things should be considered.
1. There is nothing in past times infallible but the Divinely-inspired.
2. There is always more of the inspired in the present than in the past.
VI. A consideration that is solemn. “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing.” This fact, which is introduced parenthetically, is of solemn moment to us all. (Homilist.)