Big Idea: Bildad so focuses on God’s justice that he is blind to Job’s blamelessness.

Understanding the Text

In contrast to Job’s passionate speech in Job 6–7, Bildad’s first speech, in chapter 8, is calm and analytical. With an almost unfeeling tone, Bildad is more the lecturing professor than the comforting pastor. Unlike Eliphaz, who at least began by affirming Job (4:3–4), Bildad is caustic from the start, dismissing Job’s words as a “blustering wind” (8:2). Bildad intensifies the retribution principle that Eliphaz stated into a rigid formula of double retribution, in which God always prospers the righteous (8:20) and always destroys the wicked (8:13). Bildad uses logic (8:3–7), tradition (8:8–10), and analogies from nature (8:11–19) to argue his position, and he refuses to consider …