Job 8:8

Job's three friends completely misunderstood God's government. They claimed he must have been doing evil, or God would not have dealt with him this way. Eliphaz went on personal experience. He said, "As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same." Job 4:8. Bildad is the voice of tradition and the authority of antiquity. He said, "Inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out." Job 8:8. Zophar displayed law and religiousness. He said, "If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away... then you will lift up your face without blemish." Job 11:14-15.

Bildad says, in effect: "It does not matter what we have seen with our own eyes in our day. We ought to listen to those who went before us. They know better than we do." So he says, "For inquire, please, of bygone ages" (Job 8:8). Bildad had received his knowledge by being taught it, preferring to use his ears rather than his eyes.

In verses 8-10, Bildad showed where he stood. He prized the stored-up treasures of human wisdom. Even in those far-off days, people could search records kept from even earlier times. Eliphaz argued from his own observation — what he had seen himself. Bildad argued from tradition — what the records of earlier days could teach. He distrusted any conclusion drawn from personal experience, because a man's days on earth are only "a shadow."

In this Bildad contradicted what Eliphaz had said. If Eliphaz too was born only "yesterday", what was his observation worth? But Bildad's appeal to tradition was just as empty as the appeal of Eliphaz to observation, for Bildad came to the wrong conclusion also.

We must admit that Bildad leads us into a much wider field than Eliphaz. The authority of many "fathers" carries far more weight and respectability than the experience of one man. It also looks more modest to follow many wise and learned men than your own experience. But the fact is that neither experience nor tradition will do. Experience may be true, as far as it goes. But you can hardly find two men whose experience matches exactly. And tradition is a mass of confusion, for one father differs from another. Nothing is more slippery or uncertain than the voice of tradition, the authority of the fathers.

He goes beyond Eliphaz: "For we are but of yesterday." That is true. But what does all the stored-up wisdom of the past give us when the question is God's truth? It is not to the past that we are to turn, but to God and His word. How immeasurably better is the position of those who have the "sure word of prophecy," "the oracles of God."

Had they appealed to divine revelation, it would have been an entirely different matter. The truth of God is the only standard — the one great authority. It measures everything, and everything must bow to it sooner or later. No man has any right to lay down his own experience as a rule for others; and if no one man has that right, neither has any number of men.

It is always easier to follow tradition than the written word of God. Following tradition does not exercise the conscience. It also spares us the difficulty, sometimes a serious one, of giving reasons for what we do. It is enough that our upbringing from infancy taught us to believe and practise certain things... What one generation hands down to the next may not be bad in itself. It may even have been good, at least for its time. But it sets up a false standard and a human authority in the soul. That authority may not deny the word of God outright, but it will surely put God's word in second place.