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Job 8

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Bildad speaks: El does not pervert justice

1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

2 How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? 3 Does El pervert justice? Or does Shaddai pervert what is right? 4 If your children have sinned against Him, He has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. 5 If you will seek El earnestly and plead for the favor of Shaddai, 6 if you are pure and upright, surely now He will rouse Himself for you and restore the dwelling of your righteousness. 7 Though your beginning was small, your latter end will greatly increase.

Ask the former generation

8 For inquire, please, of the former generation, and give heed to what their fathers searched out; 9 for we are but of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow. 10 Will they not teach you and tell you, and bring forth words from their heart?

11 Can papyrus grow tall where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish without water? 12 While it is still in its greenness and not cut down, it withers before any other plant. 13 So are the paths of all who forget El, and the hope of the godless shall perish; 14 his confidence is cut off, and his trust is a spider's web. 15 He leans on his house, but it does not stand; he holds fast to it, but it does not endure. 16 He is lush before the sun, and his shoots spread out over his garden; 17 his roots are wrapped around the stone heap; he looks upon a house of stones. 18 If he is torn from his place, then it will deny him, saying, "I have never seen you." 19 See, this is the joy of his way, and out of the dust others will sprout.

20 See, El will not reject a blameless man, nor will He take the hand of evildoers. 21 He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy. 22 Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.

Notes

  • 8:1 Bildad, the second friend (see the note at 2:11), now speaks. Eliphaz leaned on a vision in the night (4:12-16); Bildad leans on the wisdom of the generations before him (verses 8-10). Like Eliphaz's, his words are recorded truly but must be weighed against the end of the book (see the note at 4:1).
  • 8:3 This question is the heart of Bildad's speech, and its answer is certainly no (Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4). His error is in what he draws from it: that suffering always proves guilt. So in the next breath he implies that Job's children died for their own sin (verse 4), though the reader knows from chapters 1-2 that this was not the cause, and that Job used to offer burnt offerings for them in case they had sinned (1:5). On the name Shaddai, see the note at 5:17.
  • 8:20 "Blameless" is tam, the very word the book used for Job (1:1, 8; 2:3), and Bildad seems to imply that Job cannot be such a man. What he says of El is true, and the end of the book bears it out, though not as Bildad means: Yahweh restores Job and gives him twice as much as before (42:10-12), after Job has prayed for his friends, and not because he confessed the hidden sin Bildad assumed.

Job 7 · Job 9

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