Job 18:16 Commentary and Bible Study

The evil man is like a tree which flourishes for a time and no one looking at it thinks that there is anything wrong with it. But even before the change becomes visible, the death of that tree is guaranteed, for changes have taken place under the ground which the observer cannot see. The roots which are the source of all its nourishment have dried up and withered. Somehow they have become diseased or their water supply has been cut off. It is dying from the roots up and nothing can prevent this. Think of a willow growing beside a great river and the river is diverted. The willow stands there for a time looking just as it did but its death is certain. This picture of the judgment of the wicked stresses the slow but steady progress of the justice of God in catching up with them. No one should be fooled by the fact that they appeared to flourish for a time. So no one should be fooled by the fact that Job appeared to be a righteous man. The more discerning like Bildad suspected all along that there was something too good to be true about him. The wicked, according to Bildad, are soon forgotten after their death, and all recollection of them is lost; it is as if they had never lived. They have no good name to be preserved, and if they are remembered at all, it is for their foolishness. This matters greatly to those who comfort themselves that, though they do not continue to live physically on earth, they exist still in the memory of those who knew them and they are held in honour. But men do not recall the wicked, but are pleased to forget them. They are driven from the light of this world into the darkness of eternal death, and even for them it has some light. Bildad does not mean that they are driven by their fellow human beings but by the hand of God. The second half of the verse is parallel: they are chased out of the world as if the world is in a hurry to get rid of them and forget that they were ever born, so disagreeable are their lives and conduct. If man takes part in this at all, it is, as Barnes suggests, in being glad to be rid of them, and spend no time in giving them a dignified funeral. The wicked have no posterity to continue their name for they are either childless or else, as in Job’s case, their children die early and their inheritance is given to others. They do not have the satisfaction of seeing their children living in their houses and enjoying the fruits of their work, but instead they sense that all that they have done is lost and their lives have been wasted. This could be understood metaphorically to mean that such children as he had did not wish to even acknowledge his existence.Barnes explains that verse 20 is taken in two different ways. The KJV understand this to be a reference to time and translates the words as ‘They that come after’ and ‘they that went before’ making the words a reference to time, but many of the modern version including the NKJ see a reference not to time but to location: ‘those in the west’ and ‘those in the east’. It is difficult to see how those who came before Job could be frightened at the things which happened to him which they did not know about. The idea is that knowledge of Job’s case would spread to the farthest regions and would be proverbial, so that what happened to him would be a warning to all who heard of his sufferings.We can reach no other conclusion, says Bildad, than that this is how God deals with the wicked and you are such a man. This attack was hard for Job to resist, for he himself lacked an explanation for his troubles. If he insisted that he was innocent, they replied that God does not treat the innocent in this way, and Job could offer no adequate reason why he suffered so. He was tried to stave off what seemed like plausible explanations for his condition from the viewpoint of natural wisdom with reasoning that looked weak.