Job 8:8

For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age,.... With respect to the truth of what he had said, or should say; he does not desire Job to take his word for it, but inquire how it was in former times;

For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers: The former age - the age immediately preceding Job. Their fathers - the fathers pricking that age, and therefore still further back.

Of the former age, i.e. of our predecessors, who had the advantage of longer life and more experience, besides more frequent revelations from God, than we have; who also will be more impartial judges of this cause than we may be thought to be. Inform thyself from them by the instructions which they left, either in word or writing, what their opinion was about the manner of God’ s dealings with men. Prepare thyself to the search of their fathers; do not slightly, but seriously and industriously, search the ancient records.

Job 8:8 For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers:Ver. 8. For enquire, I pray thee] Bildad speaks fairly, as Eliphaz had done, whom he all along imitateth. A bove maiori discit arare minor. Of the former age] The generations who came before, the Kadmonim, as the Jews called their ancestors, and used this saying concerning them, Cor priscorum fuit sicut porta, &c., the heart of our progenitors was as the gate of the porch of the Temple, ample and beautiful; but the heart of their posterity is as the eye of the needle, narrow and of no receipt in comparison, Rara datur longo prudentia temporis usu (Talmud). Of witnesses Aristotle witnesseth, that the more ancient they are the more creditable, because less corrupt, Pιστοτατοιοιπαλαιοι, αδιαφθοροιγαρ (Rheto. lib. i). Nihil mihi antiquius, say the Latins; Nothing is more ancient to me, that is, more highly reputed. And new things are nothing, say the Greeks, τακαινακενα. Siculus maketh mention of an Egyptian priest, who said to Solon, one of the Greek Sages, You Greeks are very boys (ye are but of yesterday, as it is in the next verse), neither is there an old man (that is, a man versed in ancient histories, or acquainted with antiquities) to be found amongst you all, Seris venit usus ab annis, Gερωνδεελληνουκεστι (Diod. Sic.). Much of the ancient divinity was traditional till Moses set pen to paper; the mind of God was either immediately revealed, or handed down and transmitted from father to son, from generation to generation. Hence Bildad here bids Job inquire of the former ages; and thereto refers him for further information; so doth Moses the Israelites, Deuteronomy 4:20; Deuteronomy 32:7. Antiquity, so it be right, is of no small authority; that is a received rule, Quod antiquissimum verissimum, That is truest which is most ancient; as we prefer the newest philosophy, so the ancientest divinity. The Papists boast much of antiquity (as the Gibeonites did of old shoes and mouldy bread); but when they come to prove it, they go no higher than to about a thousand years ago. They scornfully look upon us as novelers, and ask where our religion was before Luther? We answer them, that our religion was always in the Bible, where their religion never was. This is the old commandment, saith St John, which was from the beginning, 1 John 2:7. And prepare thyself to the search of their fathers] Or fit thyself, fix thy mind upon it, as Psalms 100:1. We must not think to find truth but upon a serious search, Proverbs 2:3. Anaxagoras complained omnia esse circumfusa tenebris, that all things were full of darkness. Empedocles, that the inlets of the senses were very narrow. Democritus, that truth lay hid as it were in a deep pit that could hardly be fathomed. St Paul cries out, O the depth! How unsearchable are God’ s judgments, and his ways past finding out!

Verse 8. Inquire - of the former age] לדור רישון ledor rishon, of the first age; of the patriarchs; the first generation of men that dwelt upon the earth: not of the age that was just past, as Mr. Peters and several others have imagined, in order to keep up the presumption of Job's high antiquity. Bildad most evidently refers to an antiquity exceedingly remote.

8–19. The moral wisdom of the ancients Bildad, having laid down his moral principle, invites Job to reflect that it is a principle resting on the research and the generalized experience of men of generations long past, whose long lives enabled them to weigh and balance and infer from the multitude of cases the general truth. It is no new theory of his or of the short-lived men of to-day, who are but of yesterday and know nothing. These maxims of the ancient world are clothed in rich and gorgeous similes drawn from the luxuriant plant-life of the sultry East.

For inquire thee of the former age - That is, attend to the results of observation. Ask the generations which have passed, and who in their poems and proverbs have left the records of their experience.

Second long strophe — THE WISE OF THE AS THE MERITED END OF THOSE WHO FORGET GOD, Job 8:8-19.a. Introductory — Praise of the collective wisdom of the ancients, “the oldest patriarchs,” (Dr.