For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks on its mesh.
Bildad is speaking again, and his picture of the doomed man tightens. No outside hunter drags this man down. He walks into the trap himself, his own feet carrying him onto the mesh. Every word of it may be true of the wicked. The question is whether it was ever true of Job — and what it costs to aim a true statement at the wrong man.
The picture Bildad paints
Bildad piles up one image of capture after another. One writer catches both the force of the picture and its weakness as an argument.
Samuel RidoutHe uses pictures that would sting like salt on an open wound. He tells him that the wicked man's own feet drive him into the net. His twisted ways carry him down the paths that end in destruction. True, Bildad was stating a solemn fact about the wicked. But he still had to prove that Job was such a man. He declares that the wicked man walked over a snare without knowing it, and it would take him when he least expected it.
A trap you do not see
Why would anyone walk into a net? Bildad has an answer, and it is the point where his reasoning fails.
Leslie M. GrantBildad tells Job that the wicked do not know the danger is there, so evil snares them easily. The snare may be a noose hidden on the ground, perhaps covered by leaves, but pulled tight when someone walks into it. Job had not expected the evil that came on him. So Bildad thought he had not watched out for the snare, and had walked straight into it. Of course this was not the case with Job, though it is commonly true of the wicked.
His own feet, his own counsel
So who springs the trap? One writer looks past the feet to the man's own plans.
William KellyNothing he does gets him out; it only tangles him further. It is not rashness but his own counsel that plunges him into utter ruin. No cleverness helps the man who trusts himself instead of God — it only traps him. So his own feet send him into the net, and he walks over the mesh, taking no notice of what lies underneath.
The half Bildad never says
Bildad's rule of life is that conduct and outcome match. The same writer grants the rule, then shows what Bildad leaves out.
William KellyLet Job be as restless as he likes. In the end he will find out two things. Bildad and his friends are not stupid cattle. And the moral government of God 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 about the second half Bildad has not a word to say. Did he know what grace works through faith? Faith can not only move the rock, it can cast a mountain into the sea.
Job's answer: the net is God's
Job does not deny that he is caught. He denies the one thing Bildad most wants to prove — that he set the trap himself.
The Bible TreasuryJob rejects the accusation that he was caught in his own snare. He answers, "know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me." He traces it to God, but cannot see any reason for it. Yet through all this probing of the wound, he feels more and more that God is afflicting him unjustly. Even so, his spirit is still strengthening in hope. We can see it in his words: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth."
(Older translations render the first line "God has overthrown me, and has surrounded me with His net.")
Sincere and still completely wrong
Bildad is not lying. He believes what he says, and that is the warning the chapter leaves with the reader.
William KellyHe was convinced that the appearances, whatever they had been, were all hollow. Now the truth could no longer stay hidden. God's judgments and Job's own words were making it plain: he had been simply a prosperous fool, and he was meeting the just and usual end of such a man in this life. We all understand of course what Scripture means by the "fool" — a man without God. No folly is like it. So he believes it has been with Job. Is it not humbling and solemn that we may be as sincere as possible in what we believe, but completely wrong? We are just as responsible for what our convictions are as for what we do or say.
Summary
- Whose net? — That is the whole argument of the chapter. Bildad says Job's feet carried him in; Job answers that God closed the net around him.
- The net is real. — A man's own feet can carry him into ruin, down paths that end in destruction. Commentators agree the statement itself is sound.
- The net is hidden. — A noose under the leaves, sprung when least expected. Not seeing it coming is no proof of innocence, though Bildad treated it as proof.
- The net catches self-trust. — Not rashness but a man's own counsel throws him down. Cleverness rescues nobody who leans on himself instead of God.
- The net is not the last word. — Bildad talked about reaping ruin. He said nothing about reaping blessing, and nothing of what grace works through faith. Job, tangled and unanswered, still says his Redeemer lives.