Job 9: 1-12


This is God (Bildad)

Like many of our contemporaries, unfamiliar with Jesus who preached a different gospel ('neither do I condemn you'), Bildad must be judged by the traditions of his faith and day, and when confronted by acute suffering or stress his approach is still all too familiar today, but whereas Eliphaz is content to proclaim the dogma Bilded goes in for defence.

Bildad's 'comfort' is 'stop moaning and pull yourself together'. If you do wrong you will pay the price, if not you have nothing to worry about. That is God and how divine justice works. All history knows it. God will never reject a faithful person, nor will he have any truck with wrongdoers other than their just punishment. What you can't do is accuse God of injustice. If goodness produces good results and wrongdoing bad, that is either self-imposed or divine justice. That is Bildad. That is his view of God and to feel the force of it sit where Job sits or think of somebody who does.

Alternatively, ask yourself what Job hears. Job wants to know how to challenge the ways of God (vv 3, 11-12). But Bildad's God is unchallengeable — too big and too powerful. He crushes Job with a tempest (v 17), holds all the cards (v 19), leaves Job feeling boxed in (v 29), and the contest is unequal (v 32). In a battle with that God Job should know he hasn't got a chance. If Job is wicked he suffers; even if he isn't he still cannot face his friends because all they do is intensify residual guilt as a result of traditional teaching and training (9: 15-18).

Bildad, like Eliphaz, just doesn't understand. Either he has never been down this road or cannot recognise it sufficiently to help someone who has. Bildad's God of justice and fairness (8: 5-9) prohibits his ability to help. 

All is not lost, however. Job's ultimate despair (chap 10) is less self-centred. You begin to feel him standing up and getting the gloves off. Is he beginning to see that his problem is not so much God as their incipient interpretations of God?  

© Alec Gilmore 2020