Bildad, like Eliphaz, must maintain Job’s guilt. The repetition in the two parts of the verse emphasize the central challenge of the book of Job: If Job is not guilty, then who is indeed responsible for his suffering?
8:4 If your children sinned again God, then God sent them into the hand of their transgression.
This is a painful verse, to be sure, and very difficult to read, let alone defend. Is there any child who is deserving of the punishment that Job’s children endured? In defense of God, Bildad’s theological position is that if Job’s children were punished, they must have done something—they must have sinned—in order to deserve it.
8:5 If you would look to God and you would plead with the Almighty,
This verse is dependent on the verse that follows for the reader to understand it. While the nature of the suggested prayer is not yet apparent, it is clear that Bildad is telling Job that he has to pray if he expects any change to occur. Rashi hints at what will be the necessary content of Job’s prayers in his understanding of teshachayr as “you should stir up your merit.” In other words, Job may be able to persuade God as a result of the merit he has accrued throughout his life.
8:6 If you were pure and upright, God would protect you and restore you to your proper place.
Apparently, but not surprisingly, Bildad tells Job that it is all Job’s fault. Since Job was not protected, then he must have been guilty and not pure and upright. Thus, he should not expect to be restored to his former place.
The rationale behind the verse is consistent with what we have seen before in the book of Job. Suffering is punishment for sin. Repentance and remorse obviate the sin and remove the punishment. However, this is precisely what the author of Job denies. The author maintains that suffering can also affect those who have not sinned. But the author of the book of Job is unable to say that if Job and his children were punished even though they had not sinned, then a number of acts of evil have indeed been committed—and not just by Satan.
8:7 Although your beginning was small, your end will be very great.
It seems like this verse speaks of an increase in possessions rather than an increase in virtue. Not only does Bildad promise Job that he will be return to his previous state, he also promises Job that he will be better off economically than before. Rashi offers some perspective to this verse. While it remains hard to accept, Rashi suggests that the verse means that because Job’s future end will be so great, his past beginning will seem very small.
8:8 Go ask the previous generation and apply what their ancestors discovered.
The context of the verse seems to suggest that Job is being asked to reflect on the past so as to derive a lesson for the present. If the “ancestors” came upon some truth, then Job is being asked to apply it in some manner.
8:9 For we were born yesterday and so know nothing. Our days pass by on the earth like a shadow.
Bildad’s response to Job follows one attempt to deal with the problem of evil: we are simply too ignorant to understand it. This approach will be repeated later in the book in the speech from the whirlwind (chapter 38). Such an approach fails because it does not deal with what we do know. Job is presented in the book by the author as an innocent man who suffers in a multitude of ways. This suffering comes at the hands of a God thought to be good. Few people are ignorant of the conflict between the ideas of God’s goodness and the existence of evil in the world. What more is there to know?
8:10 Behold, they will teach you. They will tell you. They will speak to you from their hearts.
This verse refers to the earlier generation mentioned in 8:8. Halo, the negative word lo (no, not) preceded by the interrogative particle ha, often has the meaning of “behold” as it does here.
8:11 Can papyrus grow tall without a marsh? Can sedge sprout without water?
Bildad argues that since nature provides examples of the relationship between cause and effect, what happened to Job must have had a cause. If one assumes that suffering is due to sin, then if suffering occurs, there must have been sin. That will be the argument of verse 13 in this chapter. However, the entire central thesis of the book of Job is that suffering may not be due to sin and that observing the supposed effect may not be instructive as to the proposed cause.
8:12 While it is still growing and yet uncut, it will dry out quicker than grass.
Again, a purported lesson from nature. The lack of water will affect certain plants. The reader may derive this lesson from lesser living things: all causes have their effects.
8:13 Such are the ways of all who forget God and so will be destroyed the hope of the godless,
While Bildad’s comments are couched in universal terms, they are directed to Job. For Bildad, what Job has suffered proves that he sinned. In Modern Hebrew, the word chanef (godless) means “hypocrite.” For Bildad, and other “comforters” of Job, Job’s professions of innocence seem to be statements of a hypocrite since Job’s guilt is seemingly proven by his suffering.
8:14 Whose confidence is put in thread and whose trust is in a spider’s web.
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