Job 8:20 Commentary and Bible Study

In these final verses Bildad seems to offer Job some hope of recovery. Verse 20 is linked to verses 21-22, and should be understood in a positive sense, as an encouragement to Job, though it also has a warning attached to it. He begins to address Job personally in verse 21, but the previous verse is obviously part of the same thought. ‘God will not cast away a perfect man.’ As Caryl points out, Bildad unwittingly uses the same word that God used to describe Job in his two dialogues with Satan in chapters 1 and 2. What God says is true, Bildad is implying is not true – not until Job repents – ‘which shows how little he knows about Job.’ He in effect says, ‘People who hate you have stolen your land because you are a secret sinner, so you can’t have been perfect like us. But, even now, if you will repent of your sin God will receive you.’ However this recovery is conditional on Job swallowing the poison pill of Bildad’s diagnosis of the cause of his suffering. Although these words contain truth in the sense that God does indeed bless his people and is certainly a rewarder of obedience. It is true also that joy is the natural state of someone who possesses such great blessings. But when and where he does so is in his sovereign control. Bildad however speaks as if he knows exactly how God will act. God will bless Job right now, right here on earth, and there is no doubt that earthly blessing will follow Job’s repentance. He speaks of Job’s future, following repentance, as filled with the blessing of God. But how can Job accept this counsel? How can he draw any comfort from it? He does not know why these things are happening to him, but Bildad’s explanation is certainly wrong, and sheds no light on the situation. Job is not being punished because he is a hypocrite. Yes, he is being refined and sanctified, and he is going to be corrected for his wrong reactions to this trial; he is going to be shown things about himself and about the Lord, and he is going to learn to trust the Lord as never before, but he is not a secret sinner, and his duty is to hold onto the theology that God has taught him and not to accept this false explanation of the comforters.