Job 18:1

BILDAD’S SECOND REPLY.

1. Then answered Bildad The wicked man, inflated with vanity, may rage like a wild beast, but nature will keep on in her course. God, however, does not forget or neglect him, as is evident in the extinction of the lamp within his home and in the many snares laid for his ruin. Bildad proceeds to paint the doom of a miserable sinner his darkest colours he draws out of the misfortunes of Job. That doom is inevitable, full of terror, overwhelming. Heaven fights against him with its fires, destroys his children, crushes all hope, chases him into the outer darkness, and sets him as a monument of perpetual desolation. “The description is terribly brilliant, solemn, and pathetic, as becomes the stern preacher of repentance, with haughty mien and pharisaic self-confidence,… a masterpiece of the poet’s skill in poetic idealizing.” Delitzsch.