Job 18:7 Commentary and Bible Study

He continues his attack by describing a man who proceeds with great confidence, full of strength and striding through life as one who was familiar with all its paths. Now however there is a strange hesitancy about the man: his confidence has gone, he steps go forward gingerly afraid to extend his steps as he used to, not sure of his balance or the resilience of his ankles. Something has happened to change the man; perhaps it is old age which has cruelly transformed him, perhaps disease. Bildad uses this metaphor to describe the fall of the wicked from a merely human wisdom. Gone is that brash boldness which characterised him in all his speech and ways. What was the cause of this change? His own counsel cast him down because of the inherent destruction within it. Little did the man think that his ideas and plans were so dangerous; he chose for himself a certain course in life and followed his philosophy, but it was a philosophy of the flesh and it led to his ruin. He could not see that the seeds of ruin were already present in it from the start, but a wiser man than he – one like Bildad – could see it. Job is compared to a wicked man, who walks straight into a net and so brings about his own fall. His feet should have avoided the net and his eyes should have warned his feet, but his feet have ended up betraying his whole body. How does he fail to see the net and the snare that many others manage to avoid? His erroneous doctrine and his false view of life mean that in effect he set this trap for himself. Perhaps pride, perhaps self-confidence or wilfulness led him to go on a route that others would have seen in advance led to danger. But this man could not be told and pushed ahead in spite of the warnings. The point about a net or a snare or noose, is that once the feet are in it, every effort to get out of it only makes matters worse, for it tightens its grip or it becomes more entangled around the feet.