Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”
Bildad ends his first speech to Job with a picture of reversal: enemies covered in shame, and the wicked's home wiped out. It sounds like comfort. But it rests on a condition, and on which side of that condition Job stands.
The words themselves
The word "tent" here means more than a cloth shelter. In Hebrew it covers the whole place where a person lives.
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe word usually translated "tent" is ohel. The Authorised Version often translates it "tabernacle." It also stands for "dwelling" or "habitation," as in Job 8:22 and Psalm 91:10.
So the picture is not a folded tent. It is a whole home wiped out.
The condition hidden in the promise
The verse is the last line of a chain that starts with "if." Bildad offers Job this picture of shamed enemies only on terms. One commentator notes that he offered those terms with no real sympathy.
William KellyIf Job is really a perfect man, God will not cast him away — though neither does He grasp the hand of evildoers. He will not cast him away until He has given him the fullest grounds for thankful praise, shamed his enemies, and destroyed the wicked for ever. But applied to Job's case, Bildad's thoughts held no fellowship with God and no gracious care for the sufferer. So his judgment went by appearances, and it was unrighteous.
A suspicion wrapped in beautiful words
Bildad's argument runs underneath his fine closing words. His logic puts Job on the wrong side of his own promise.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIt is all true and grandly stated: the wicked cannot prosper, and their doom is certain. On the other hand, God will not cast off the perfect man. But Job is in the place of a man cast off. So he must belong to the wicked who do not prosper. That is hidden beneath Bildad's rhetoric. Yet the closing sentences of his first speech are beautiful, and Job fully acknowledged their truth in his reply.
Commentators differ on how far Bildad's charge goes. Another writer reads him at face value: he is not calling Job wicked, but describing what would happen to Job's opponents if Job proved blameless.
Leslie M. GrantIf Job were blameless, God would fill Job's mouth with laughing and his lips with rejoicing. Bildad was surely hinting that Job could still find such blessing if he returned to a blameless life. Then even those who hated Job would be clothed with shame, and the home of the wicked would come to nothing. He did not mean that Job was wicked. He meant that the wicked who opposed Job would be subdued.
True statements, wrongly aimed
Nothing in this verse is false as a statement about God. The damage lies in where Bildad aimed it — at a man God held dear.
William KellyThings that are true, but misunderstood and misapplied, may do more harm than many a false thing. Misapplied truth gives an error the apparent authority of God. That error carries all the more weight, because it comes as the truth. If someone says a foolish thing, or something clearly false, people despise it. But no believer can brush aside the truth of God. So when someone uses the truth of God wrongly — using it to crush one who is an object of intense interest to God at the time — how foreign and offensive to His mind!
Fulfilled, but by another road
The book ends with laughter, singing, and Job's critics silenced. What Bildad could not see was that God tests the man He is pleased with. This writer quotes an older translation of verse 20: where he says "perfect man," the ESV says "blameless man."
An Outline of Sound WordsJob knew that much of what Bildad said was true: that "God will not cast away a perfect man," that He will fill the perfect man's mouth with laughter and his lips with rejoicing, and that those who hated him would be clothed with shame. This is what happened to Job once his days of testing were over. But Bildad did not understand that God could test a man very hard when that man's life pleased Him, so that it might please Him still more.
But the road there was not the one Bildad laid out.
Samuel RidoutThis was indeed fulfilled, but in a very different way from what Bildad expected. Job is blessed not for his purity, and not for confessing the evil Bildad suspected.
Summary
- True. Every line of the verse is sound: God does shame those who hate His own, and He does end the home of the wicked.
- Conditional. It hangs on an "if." Bildad's "if" carries a suspicion, and he shows no real care for the sufferer. So his verdict follows appearances instead of God.
- Aimed wrongly. True words aimed at the wrong man do more harm than open error. They borrow God's authority to crush someone God holds dear.
- Misread. Bildad reasoned backwards, from Job's ruin to Job's guilt. His beautiful closing lines hide that argument.
- Fulfilled. Job did get the laughter and the shamed accusers. It came after testing, not after confessing invented sin, and by a road Bildad never imagined.