His roots dry up beneath, and his branches wither above.
Bildad is near the end of his speech, and he draws a tree dying from both ends at once — sap gone below, limbs stripped above. Every word of it is true of the wicked. But what happens when true words are aimed at the wrong man?
The image
Bildad has been piling up pictures: traps first, then a light going out. One writer follows where the next one lands:
Samuel RidoutHe has already changed his picture once, from traps of various kinds to a light put out in a home. Now he compares the evil man to a tree. Its root withers in the dry ground of his affliction, and its branches are cut off — like the cutting off of Job's children. All this is scripturally accurate. Does not the Psalmist say, "I have seen a wicked, ruthless man, spreading himself like a green laurel tree. Yet he passed away, and behold, he was no more" (Ps. 37:35-36)?... the fault lies in the application of such words to a man whose life gave the lie to their insistent charges of flagrant wickedness.
How far the ruin reaches
In Bildad's telling, the dried root is only the start:
William KellyThe blast of God does not stop with the evil-doer. It reaches far and long beyond him. It hangs over his memory, and it pursues his descendants... Everything above ground withers, and all underneath dries away... The application, in his mind, is as obvious as it is mistaken; the abstract truth stands, and has its own just place.
Accuracy without mercy
Job had buried all his children. So the correctness of Bildad's doctrine is no defence of Bildad:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinAll his words, though true, were complete cruelty. Job was suffering, and to hear himself pictured this way — as the wicked man who deserves his lot — must have been torture and agony beyond words.
Why misapplied truth does more harm
There is a reason a verse like this one is dangerous in the wrong mouth:
William KellyThings that are true, but misunderstood and misapplied, may do more harm than many a thing that is false. Misapplied truth gives an error the apparent authority of God. The error carries all the more weight because it comes as the truth. If someone says a foolish thing, or a plainly false one, people despise it. But no believer can treat the truth of God lightly. So when someone uses the truth of God wrongly — when he uses it to crush a man who is at that moment an object of intense interest to God — how foreign and offensive that is to His mind!
The assumption underneath
Bildad's tree only proves his case if suffering always means punishment. Another writer names that assumption:
J. G. BellettIt was not true that he was a hypocrite. It was not true, as these worldly-minded religious men would have it, that he was hiding some sin. A good conscience he had not put away. And it was their great mistake, and it is anyone's great mistake, to assume that a believer's affliction can only be punishment or judgment.
The ending Bildad never saw
Bildad meant the withered branch as proof that Job's family line was finished. The end of the book answers him:
Leslie M. GrantIt is true of the wicked. All Job's children had been killed, so Bildad used this as a cruel thrust at Job — evidence that he must be wicked. At the time, of course, Job had no children to carry on his name; but later on he did have as many children as he had before! (ch. 42:13). Bildad also hinted that Job would have no name among the renowned. Yet Job's name has been famous for centuries since that time... Bildad never allowed for the whole picture changing completely — which is just what happened before too long.
Summary
- Root — Bildad draws the wicked man as a tree dead in both directions: no moisture below, no living limb above.
- Reach — Bildad sends the judgment past the man into his memory and his children. The doctrine is sound; the aim at Job is not.
- Wound — Job had just lost all his children, and Bildad used that loss as evidence against him.
- Warning — misapplied truth does more damage than an obvious lie. It lends God's authority to an error.
- Reversal — the branch Bildad cut off grew back. Job had as many children again, and people still remember his name.