Job 18:1-21 - Homiletics

Bildad to Job: an Arabian orator's discourse.

I. THE FAULTY INTRODUCTION . Bildad possessed at least three qualifications indispensable to successful speaking—fervid imagination, glowing eloquence, and vehement passion. He was characterized also by three fatal defects—want of calmness, or self-containment, want of prudence, and want of sympathetic tenderness. Being destitute of these, he blundered like an inexperienced amateur, starting out on his oration in a hurricane of passion and ill humour, planting daggers in the breast he hoped to win by his eloquence, and forfeiting, by the very keenness of his invective, all possibility of effecting good impressions by his words. He impeached Job of:

1 . Senseless verbosity. Of speaking at an undue length; of talking for talking's sake; of hunting after words in order to overwhelm his opponents; of speaking without consideration, talking when he ought to have been thinking, making words do duty for ideas; of speaking instead of listening to his betters (verse 2). The first is the error of the facile-tongued; the second, of the shallow-pated; the third, of the conceited egotist. If Job sinned in either of these respects, he was not undeserving of reproof, much more if he erred in all. But Bildad, whose genius was not original, was probably moved to use the language of censure as much by a desire to imitate Eliphaz ( Job 15:2 ), or to retort upon Job ( Job 16:3 ), as by strong repugnance to the patriarch's offence.

2 . Unjustifiable contempt. Job had accused the friends of lacking spiritual discernment ( Job 7:4 ). Bildad interpreted the charge to mean that Job regarded them as brute beasts, devoid of sense and reason (verse 3). If Job did so, he was guilty of altogether unwarranted depreciation of his fellows. That nature, which God made only a little short of Divinity ( Psalms 8:5 ; Hebrews 2:6 ), must for ever be parted by a wide gulf from the irrational creation. Only when men voluntarily extinguish all spiritual susceptibility by continuance in sin can they be legitimately compared to the beasts that perish ( Psalms 49:12 , Psalms 49:20 ). This the friends had not done; and it is certain Job had not called them beasts. But, being men of a high spirit, they were quick to take offence.

3 . Self-devouring rage. An old insinuation of Eliphaz's reproduced ( Job 5:2 ), with a specific allusion to Job's language charging God with tearing him in his anger ( Job 16:9 ), in contradistinction to which Bildad averred that Job tore himself, literally, "his soul," in his anger (verse 4), meaning that the patriarch's misery was the fruit of his own frantic and excited behaviour, which again was the immediate result of his soul's fretful and wrathful resentment against God's providential inflictions. That Job's behaviour under his unparalleled calamities was not perfect, is obvious; that his impatience was such as to call for censure from men, may be doubted ( James 5:11 ). Yet Bildad's reproach suggests that while all "anger is a short madness," it is supreme insanity to fume and fret at the Divine dispensations, and that the most miserable man on earth must surely be he whose soul swells with rage against God because of his paternal chastisements.

4 . Egotistical presumption. In the judgment of Bildad, Job appeared to imagine that the Divine Law, which connected suffering with sin, should in his case be suspended; but that, Bildad assured the patriarch, would be as likely to occur as that, in order to oblige him, the earth which God had appointed for man's habitation should become tenantless, or the rock which Heaven's ordinance has rendered fixed and immovable should be suddenly transported from its place (verse 4). The reign of law in the material universe, and the fore-ordination of events in human history, have been frequently employed exactly as they are here used by Bildad, viz. to demonstrate the non-credibility of miracles, the inefficacy of prayer, the impossibility of such a thing as a special providence, and the intolerable arrogance of a being so mean and insignificant as man imagining that in any of the ways implied in these doctrines God would, in his behalf, interfere with the established order of things. But it h; no presumption to believe in what Scripture teaches—the possibility of miracles ( Matthew 19:26 ), the efficacy of prayer ( Psalms 65:2 ; Matthew 7:7 ; James 1:5 ), the reality of a special providence ( Psalms 40:17 ; Matthew 10:30 ); since the first can be proved by adequate testimony, while the second and third are supported and confirmed by the inner witness of conscience. Even the case pronounced by Bildad to be impossible, viz. the suspension of the moral law of retribution, has come to pass. The salvation of man through the cross of Jesus Christ attests the fallacy of Bildad's fundamental assumption. And now Bildad, having proceeded thus far with his oration, for any good he was likely to do to Job, might and should have prudently relapsed into silence. Nevertheless, he preached an eloquent discourse.

II. THE LOFTY THEME . The subject descanted on by Bildad was the inevitable retribution which sooner or later overtook the wicked. Set forth under an emblem familiar to Oriental poetry, viz. the extinction of the fire in a dwelling, and of the lamp depending from the roof of a tent (verses 5, 6), it was depicted as:

1 . Delayed. The evil-doer was not arrested by the hand of Providence the moment he set forth on his career, but was allowed for a season to thrive by his ungodliness, to amass wealth, acquire power, and secure friends, to become the head of a family or the chief of a clan, and to possess a tent, or rather a circle of tents, with his own commodious, well-furnished, richly ornamented, brilliantly lighted tabernacle in the midst. So Eliphaz saw the foolish taking root ( Job 5:3 ), and David beheld the wicked spreading like a green bay tree ( Psalms 37:35 ), and Asaph witnessed the ungodly prospering until at last they were suddenly overwhelmed ( Psalms 73:13 ).

2 . Certain. Nevertheless, i.e. notwithstanding all contrary appearances, the sinner's own security, his determination to resist or evade the pursuing Nemesis, his fierce resentment when the hand of the destroyer should apprehend him, "the light of the wicked should be put out." Not absolutely and universally true of their terrestrial career, it is yet positively sure that the prosperity of the ungodly shall decline, if not on earth, at least in the future world.

3 . Complete . The glow upon the sinner's hearth and the lamp from his roof should be equally extinguished. The light in which he sunned himself, i.e. his personal comfort and happiness, and the light in which he shone to others, i.e. his greatness and glory, should alike fade and become dark. Sometimes such experience is the lot of God's people, as the case of Job testifies. Happy they to whom Jehovah is an everlasting Light ( Isaiah 60:19 ), and who, when they sit in temporal darkness, can rejoice in his cheering beams ( Micah 7:8 ).

III. THE BRILLIANT ILLUSTRATION . The wicked man's career, from the moment of his apprehension by misfortune till the hour of his complete destruction, was next represented in a series of graphic pictures. In these he appears as:

1 . Snared by calamity. (Verses 7-10.)

2 . Haunted by terrors. (Verses 11, 12.) The evil conscience that he carries in his bosom, though long slumbering, at last awakes, inspires him with fearful forebodings of impending disaster, peoples all the atmosphere around him with ghostly apparitions which dog his footsteps, summons up before his startled vision, well-nigh every moment of his wretched existence, spectral shadows of coming woe, which paralyze his strength and utterly unman his wicked soul. (Cf. Eliphaz's picture of a guilty conscience ( Job 15:21 ), of which Bildad's appears to be an echo and imitation.)

3 . Arrested by disease. (Verses 13, 14.) (On the expression, "the firstborn of death," see Exposition.) The obvious allusion is to such a malady as Job's leprosy, which, when it apprehends a sinner,

4 . Overwhelmed with destruction. (Verses 15-17.) And this in three particulars:

(1) the desolation of his homestead, which, being doomed, like Jericho, to remain ununhbited, is henceforth tenanted by "creatures and things strange to the deceased rich man, such as jackals and nettles" (Delitzisch), or haunted ever afterwards by ghostly terrors (Cox)—a thought which Bildad again copies from the preceeding speech of Eliphaz.

5 . Thrust into darkness . (Verse 18.) Chased from the world as unfit to live longer on the earth ( Proverbs 14:32 ), as afterwards, though falsely, Christ ( Luke 23:18 ) and St. Paul ( Acts 22:22 ); driven away from the light of day into the darkness of death, from the light of prosperity into the darkness of misfortune, from the light of happiness into the darkness of misery—a terribly true picture of the fate of the impenitent.

6 . Loaded with infamy. (Verse 20.) Transformed into an object of horror and amazement to

IV. THE MISTAKEN APPLICATION . That Job was the subject of Bildad's sombre sketch is apparent from the portrait of Job's character prefixed by the speaker to his dismal harangue, the resemblance in many points of Bildad's imaginary picture to the actual history of the patriarch, and the sharp incisive manner in which the moral of his tale is pointed out (verse 21). Yet the preacher completely misdirected his discourse. For:

1 . The character he portrayed did not belong to Job. Job was not a wicked man, and a man that knew not God, as Bildad was perfectly aware; but, as Job contended, and God himself allowed, "a perfect man and an upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil."

2 . The sermon he preached did not apply to Job. Even of wicked men it was not always and universally true that retribution overtook them on account of their misdeeds. But of Job it was wholly incorrect that he was suffering for his sins.

3 . The future he predicted was not experienced by Job. In part it seemed to be, but in its principal ingredients it was not. He was cast down from his prosperity, but he was not chased out of the world. The light was for a season extinguished in his dwelling, but it was afterward rekindled with greater brilliancy than before. His homestead was ruined, but not cursed, being afterwards re-erected and blessed. His first family was taken from him, but a second was bestowed. His name was not consigned to infamy, but has been crowned with everlasting renown.

Learn:

1. That no preacher should carry personalities to the pulpit.

2 . That a great text should, if possible, be followed by a great sermon.

3 . That an orator should study to be true rather than brilliant in his illustrations.

4 . That discourses otherwise good are sometimes delivered to the wrong hearers.

5 . That the predictions of angry prophets are seldom fulfilled.