Job 18:4

Yet Bildad begins his second speech, recorded in Job 18, on a very harsh note. Job had certainly not yet come to the end of himself, and there was nothing in his friends' arguments to make him stop talking. Bildad clearly took Job's rejection of their position, and the claims Job made, as treating them as though they were animals. So he shot back with an insult of his own. All four men feared God, Job most of all. But see how the spirit behind their words had sunk!

Job had spoken of others making him suffer and God apparently doing so too. But Bildad tells him that he tears himself in his anger, in other words, that Job was causing himself all his trouble. Does Job expect the earth or the rocks to yield to his will? This exaggerated what Bildad thought he saw in Job's attitude.

Taking up his charges, Bildad reminds Job that all his lamentations are unavailing: he is only tearing himself in vain rage — a most unkind description of the laments of the afflicted man. He goes on to tell him that all his cries will not change the fixed order of the earth; it will not become desolate for his sake, nor will the stable rock of retribution for evil be moved out of its place.

The friends held that true religion pays off in this life — that honesty is the best policy. So Bildad, in chapter 18, insists that since "the light of the wicked is put out," Job must not expect any exception in his case. He is not to think that for his sake "the rock be removed out of its place" — in other words, that God will drop His general plan to show him special favour. All of this tells Job plainly that since he is now suffering so much, he must be a hypocrite. Only the light of the wicked goes out like this.

Let Job kick against it as hard as he likes. In the end he will find that, just as they are not to be counted stupid cattle, so God's moral government is as immovable as the course of the earth or the stubborn rock. What a man sows, he reaps: if evil, ruin; if good, blessing. But of blessing Bildad has not a word to say. Did he know what grace works through faith? Faith can not only remove the rock, but cast a mountain into the sea.

His speech is full of beautiful poetic pictures and true statements about the certain doom of the wicked. But it misses the mark, because it completely fails to show any connection between Job and the wicked whose end he describes so vividly.

But, as we know, Job was holding to the truth, at least in standing against what they claimed. We may think of him as standing at the head of that great company of righteous people who have gone through deep suffering for no visible reason. If Job used strong language, his friends' charges had given him great provocation.

And let us learn a serious lesson from this. Countless discussions among Christians have grown into controversies and ended in trading accusations. That is the flesh in every one of us. Even Paul and Barnabas were not free from it, as Acts 15:39 shows. So let us be warned.