Job 18

Notes

In no small heat of spirit Bildad replied, 2. How long wilt thou cast forth such confused, double-meaning, and unintelligible words, as if you wanted to entrap us? Declare plainly what you intend, and after that we shall deliver our minds with the utmost clearness, freedom, and boldness. 3. For to what purpose is it to talk with one who looks upon us as a company of dull beasts, into whom nothing of wisdom can enter! 4. With impatient rage you tear and torment yourself. Must God, to humour thee, suspend or cease his government of the world, and leave everything to chance: or must he alter his immutable counsels or the fixed laws of his providence? 5. But say what thou wilt, though the wicked man may prosper for a while, all his splendour and apparent happiness shall quickly come to an end. 6. The wealth and honour of his family shall be turned into misery, contempt, and sorrow, together with himself. 7. His bold and resolute attempts to increase or maintain his prosperity shall be unsuccessful and involve him in insurmountable difficulties, and his own devices shall prove the means of his overthrow. 8. His own wiles and works bring him into inextricable difficulty and distress; and every step he takes in prosecution of his designs, or in the way of pleasing himself, is attended with perpetual danger and farther ensnares him. 9. While ruinous snares take hold of and entangle him, they who thirst for his blood, wealth, or honours shall prevail against him. 10. Even when he neither foresees nor fears it, he is always in danger of some sudden mischief. 11. Unexpected and overturning terrors shall fearfully affright him on all hands and waste him away on his feet, while they make him to run from place to place for safety. 12. Sorrows shall insatiably, as with intense hunger, feed upon him, till his strength, wealth, and honour be entirely wasted; and nothing but prepared and terrible destruction shall everywhere attend him. 13. Rottenness, fearful affliction, and a miserable death shall consume his flesh and bones. 14. Whatever he relied upon for the support of himself and his family shall utterly fail him and hasten his unhappy death; while terrors, as a mighty king, shall drive him into the depths of hell. 15. Terrors, despair, and destruction shall dwell in his habitation, which he unjustly acquired; and thunder and lightning, or some exemplary judgment, like that of Sodom, shall destroy it. 16. His whole estate, habitation, and family shall be irrecoverably ruined. 17. And the very name of him shall be buried in everlasting infamy and forgetfulness. 18. He shall be driven from his prosperity and life into misery and death, and chased out of the world as a nuisance into eternal woe. 19. None of his descendants or kindred shall long survive him to keep up his remembrance. 20. They, on every side, who behold, and they who afterward read or hear of the fearful justice of God upon him, shall be astonished and terrified at it. 21. This, indeed, is a just description of the miserable condition of the wicked at last; and thus shall those who dishonour God be abased.

Ver. 4. [Bildad in the first member of the sentence addresses his friends, describing Job; in the second he addresses Job: 'Shall the earth be forsaken for thee?' shall God leave off the care of all his other works to attend to thy vain complaints, and anticipate the final judgment to gratify your sinful impatience? C.——The meaning of the passage is:—Dost thou imagine that by thy vehement conduct, by which thou art become enraged against thyself, thou canst effect any change in the established divine order of the world? It is a divine law that sufferings are the punishments of sin; thou canst no more alter this than that at thy command, or for thy sake, the earth, which is appointed to be the habitation of man, will become desolate; or that a rock will remove from its place. P.]

Ver. 10. [Delitzsch translates as follows:—'The trap holdeth his heel fast, the noose bindeth him. His snare lieth hidden in the earth; his nets upon the path.' This brings out pretty clearly the sense of the passage. P.]

Ver. 13. [First-born of death. Who or what is this? Some think it the pestilence, others famine, but neither seems entitled to this terrible pre-eminence. Is it not the destruction or desolation (ver. 12) 'ready at his side' that is (ver. 13) twice said to 'devour his strength?' The one act points to the same agent. How blessed the hope of that time when the great devourer shall devour no more, but death shall be swallowed up in victory! 1 Co. 15. 54. C.]

Reflections.—There is much wisdom in leaving off contention before it be meddled with; it so furiously heats men's spirits, and makes them to misinterpret everything said or done by their antagonist; nay, makes them to misapply the most precious or tremendous truths of God! They suspect affronts that were never intended. They even torment themselves—their pride and passion proving hurtful to both soul and body. But to what terrible judgments of God, in time, in death, and chiefly in eternity, are the wicked exposed! Short-lived and unsubstantial is their prosperity, and heavy the curse that is upon them! Being abandoned of God, Satan first ensnares and afterwards torments them. Agitated by their lusts they rush headlong into ruin; till death in all its stings and terrors devours them! Then friends, physicians, and all human supports are vain. Their glorious prosperity is quickly turned into everlasting shame and contempt.