Job 8:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 8:1

Comments

We must surely agree that the tone of Bildad the next speaker is instantly offensive. All his speeches are insensitive and abrasive. Bildad’s offensive makes Eliphaz look like a gentleman. ‘Doth God pervert justice? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?’ It seems a good sentiment until you see where he is going with it. ‘Yes Job, God is just to treat you like this.’ God’s justice is indeed perfect, but Bildad will misuse this truth. It is true that an unbelieving world accuses God of perverting justice and judgment, and deserves to be rebuked for it. The world means to blame God for the effects of the curse – for sending wars, sicknesses and tragedies – and they accuse him of too great a severity in punishing sinners with eternal damnation, and therefore it needs to be taught that God has every right to punish the wicked. But Job’s complaint is not that God punishes the wicked; rather it is that he seems to punish the righteous, and fails to discriminate between the righteous and the wicked. Bildad might well have used these words to defend God’s justice in general, but the case of Job was different and he ought to have seen this.Bildad’s view of God’s providence is very simplistic; there is no mystery for him in anything that happens on earth; there is never any difficulty in reading providence. God is always just, but furthermore his justice is always visible, always discernible by human beings. Great hardship and suffering like Job’s are sure evidence that a man has sinned, for it would be unjust of God to treat an innocent man in this way. There is no other purpose to trials, in his view, than to punish sin. Job therefore is a hypocrite, and his complaints about the justice of God are exactly the way that hypocrites always find fault with God. Bildad does nothing to come alongside Job and help him face the difficulty of reconciling the goodness of God to such hard circumstances.

Application

The misapplication of truth is very painful to deal with us when it directed against us. Job could not deny that what Bildad said was true: God cannot pervert justice. He is perfectly just and righteous in all that he does. But it is another thing to say that therefore all his dealings with us in this life are implementation of his justice against us. We know that that was not true in Job’s case. There are many reasons why troubles come. They may be sent to chastise or some sin which we are aware of, but they may also teach us patience, or allow us to mount a witness under affliction, or loosen our hold on this world and make us long for heaven, or to teach us to examine ourselves more carefully. Bildad could only see one reason for this, and it put Job in the worst light possible. Bildad behaves as someone who does not understand grace, but all who offer counsel to others in dire situations need to be very careful not to be hasty in their conclusions about why troubles have come.

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Job 8:1 Commentary and Bible Study