Chapter 8
Bildad, the second friend, speaks.
Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
Job 8:3 ESV
2025 - The point of this verse is that what is happening to Job is not injustice. God is never unjust. Therefore, Job has done something to bring this all on himself. I say God isn't doing this. God has allowed Satan to do this. The obvious rebuttal is that if it could not happen unless God let it. then ultimately God is responsible for it. This is definitionally wrong. It is not possible that God is responsible for injustice. That's where this gets messed up. That's where all the confusion comes in when we try to argue this point. What it looks like to us is wrong if it makes God look unjust. We have no qualifications to judge what God does, or his reasons for what he does, or even weigh the values of alternatives he might choose to do. God has a greater point to make here, one that we may understand later in the book, and that point is of far greater good than the bad that is being suffered by one man.
In this argument, and in most others, we ought not speculate on God's reasons. It is much more sound to maintain that we, as finite creatures with finite minds, can never possibly comprehend all the reasons for everything that God allows. AND, it is Satan that is doing the harm. God gave him leave, and he chose to inflict needless pain for his own ends. It is Satan who is perverting justice by his own hand.
God also gives us leave, every day, to do as we want. Adam chose to sin, and so do we all. Are our sins also God's responsibility? The Bible says WE are the ones at fault for our own sins, says it clearly and unarguably. If the person next to you leans over and pops you in the nose, will you yell at God for being unfair, or the person that hit you? Do you want the thief who stole your wallet arrested...or do you just go home and yell at God and let the thief go free? God is also giving us leave to sin in order to ultimately make a bigger point - a point we may only dimly comprehend until we are there with Him.
As God gives us leave, he also gave Satan leave, and Satan did what we would expect. He acted contrary to justice, contrary to right.
2025 -
First reply:
God is never unjust.
Unjust things happen.
Therefore, God is not the one doing those unjust things.
Second reply:
God gives us free will. Sometimes we choose to be unjust. When this happens, we are the guilty party, not God.
If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation.
Job 8:5-6 ESV
2025 - I never noticed before that Bildad makes an accurate prediction here. God does restore to Job all that he had lost. Several lines in here from Bildad predict this end.
2021-This philosophy, pretty much right in line with Eliphaz, seems to be the "standard that men require of God". These two believe they understand how God wants the world to work, and then they impose their own understanding on God and require from Him what they believe is right. That has never changed. We still expect God to behave our way. vs 3 says that God never does anything that is unjust, and vvs 5-6 say that if you are righteous, just point that out to God and in His mercy, he will fix your "injustice". (It did happen this way for Job...but this is not any kind of guarantee.) But this whole book says it doesn't work that way. We all see every day that this world does not work that way. In heaven, it never works that way, because there is no sin in heaven to bring about consequences. This idea we have of how things work is a construct to make us feel like we are wise and understanding about the world, to give us peace when others have it so much worse than us - they are sinners and getting the justice they deserve, and explains why we get so many blessings - we are righteous and getting the blessings that we deserve. We need to fight this view of things, because it is not correct, and this "reality" exists nowhere. It makes us ungrateful for our blessings because we think we deserve them. It makes us callous toward the suffering, because they deserve their punishment. In both of these positions, we are OUT of God's will!
Possible FB post.
I like these verses:
8 "For inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out. 9 For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow. [Job 8:8-9 ESV]
One life is too short to understand how things work, too short to learn anything "new". Look to the past, to accumulated wisdom, and stop saying that your situation is unique.
2023 - But...Bildad is wrong here. The point is that Job believes his situation is unique and unprecedented. There is no "ancient wisdom" that explains why all these things are happening to him. And Job is right! This "contest" between God and Satan over the righteousness of one human being IS unprecedented! So this verse that I like so well is in fact a big error! Things can happen to us, still today, that no human philosophy can explain. Further, depending on human understanding for solace in time of trouble can lead you to a complete dead end. Never believe that God has run out of ideas. He knows things, he can do things, he can think things that are absolutely beyond anything that has gone before.
Possible FB post P. S. Does this make Solomon wrong when he said "There is nothing new under the sun?" How does that fit?
Bildad says God will restore Job if Job will ask, because God is a God of justice.
"Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers.
Job 8:20 ESV
Many verses are stated this way as a sort of sarcasm. This statement is exactly how we believe God operates. In fact, we try to put Him in this box. But no box holds God. We know from the context that in this case God is rejecting the blameless, and those who stole Job's goods have profited. We are to see that God's purposes and God's justice are not the same as ours.
Bildad believed Job just needed to ask God for relief if he truly hasn't done anything wrong.
2024 - The final three verses of Chapter 8 summarize Bildad's theology, not so very different from ours, but far to simple for who God really is:
20 "Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers. 21 He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting. 22 Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more." [Job 8:20-22 ESV]. This is actually a pretty accurate prediction from Bildad. In Job's case, there is restoration, more children, and those who have laughed at Job are put to shame. Perhaps the difference is that restoration is not always on this earth.
2024 - In vvs 5-6 is where Bildad tells Job to go direct to God and ask for relief.