Job 18

Job 18:1-4

In this chapter Blessed makes a second asshole upon Job. 1. He reproves him as talkative and passionate, ver. 1—4. 2. He undergoes upon the doctrine he had before maintained, concerning the misery of wicked people, and the vain that attends them, ver. 5—21. with an evident application to Job’s safe.

1. THEN

2. THEN answered Bildad the Shubite, and said, 2. How long will it be, ’ere you make an end of words? mark, and afterwards we will speak. 3. Wherefore are we counted as beaths, and reputed vile in your fight? 4. ‘He teareth + himself in his anger: shall the earth be forsaken for thee? and shall the rock be removed out of his place?

Sharply Bildad takes up the discourse, and seems the more exasperated at Job’s presumption and oblivency.

1. He charges him with impetuous talkativeness, v. 2. as if he took pleasure in hearing his own voice, and would never have done with his idle words, (arguments or reason he will not call them) as if they were men, empty founds, for or put them with. Note, (1.) They that engrets the conversation, and with all of nothing worth hearing, deliver rebuke. (2.) It is too common with disputants to treat each other with contempt and ruined, but abuts is not argument.

2. He intimates that he was contentious to their found reasoning, and that it was vain to speak, unless he would pay some greater regard to their discourse, v. 2. Note, It is endless speaking to those who will not hear.

3. He regards himself and his friends, as highly insulted, v. 3. because Job had, chap. xvi. 4. spoken of them as warning understanding; and chap. xii. 7. referred them to the beasts for widow: he would infer, that he esteemed them as bratish and vile. Note, Many people are not to beؤself affronta that were never intended.

4. He accedes him of mad rage. He had said, chap. xvi. 9. he teareth me in his anger: No, says Bildad, you are your own tormentor, your passions are your plague. Note, Unmotified passions bring their curse and punishment along with them.

5. He charges him with insistent expectation, to change the settled order of providence: Shall the earth be forsaken because of thee? Shall God insert his method of government, and for thy take cease to punish the wicked, and bless the righteous? and shall the rock be removed out of his place? the unchangeable God alter his purposes, and no longer give to a man according to his words? No: the supposition is presumptuous and arrogant. He first takes it for granted, that Job’s sufferings were the punishment of his iniquity, and sounds on them this heavy charge.

6. Yea, ’the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine. 6. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his + candle shall be put out with him. 7. The steps of his strength shall be strained, and his own counsel shall cast him down. 8. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare. 9. The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail against him. 10. The mare is fluid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way. 11. ‘Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet. 12. His strength shall be hunger-bitten, and ‘defruction shall be ready at his side. 13. It shall devour the 1st strength of his skin: ere the first-born of death shall devour his strength. 14. ‘His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors. 15. It shall dwell in his tabernacle, because it is none of his: ‘brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation. 16. ‘His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off. 17. ‘His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street. 18. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. 19. ‘He shall neither have son nor nephew among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings. 20. They that come after him, shall be astonished at his day, as they that went before were affrighted. 21. Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God.

Job 18:5-21

Bildad here largely describes the misery of the wicked, and this with a view to Job’s case; but he greatly erred from the mark. For though all he can say of a sinful state, reflecting its punishment and wretchedness is true, yet it doth not always appear in this world; for neither are all who are sinful outwardly afflicted and miserable, nor do the greatest sufferings at all prove the want of the most sinful piety.

1. Darkness shall overwhelm the wicked man. His light of prosperity shall be quickly extinguished, the sparks of worldly comforts he rejoiced in shall be quenched, his family shall be reduced to deep distress, and he shall go down to his grave in darkness and misery, v. 5. 6. Note, (1.) The joys of a wicked man are but as the sparks from a furnace, so quickly will they be fled and gone. (2.) There is a curse upon the house of the

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ungodly; and as his ill example feays those who belong to him, they perish together.

2. He shall be enlivened and enslaved by afflictions; his strong steps of health shall be strained by sickness; or his large possessions round which he stalked in pride, shall be cut short, v. 7. His craft shall entangle him, and be his ruin; the net he spread for others shall take his own feet, and wherever he walks, the snare of sin, and consequently misery, is at his heels; he shall be caught without power to escape, and the robber shall spoil him, unable to make resistance: hidden dangers surround his steps, and sudden destruction is ready to fall on him, v. 8, 10. Note, (1.) Satan lays first the snare of sin, and if once the soul cometh into his net, he will be as surely a tormentor as he hath been the tempter. (2.) When God leaves a wicked man to his own country, he softens headlong into man.

3. Terrors make him afraid on every side, v. 11. within, an accusing conscience, before him death looks ghally, the grave yawns, an offended God frowns, hell opens. He would take to his feet, but neither can he run to fly from God, or from himself. Note, Many a wretched soul flurs to consciences, cares, and dislipatients for ease, but vain the attempt: Havet lateri lethalis aranda.

4. Famine and destruction shall come upon him, v. 12. devour him to his very skin, and the most terrible of deaths bring him down to his grave, v. 13. All his confidence shall fall him, he shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, after beholding the desolations spread around it, and no one comfort remaining; and at last, as a maletache reluctantly dragged to execution, he shall be brought to the King of Terrors, terrors unspeakable, before death, in death, after death. Note, (1.) Death is terrible to nature, till grace hath disformed him of his mortal fling, but to the impenitent sinner he continues a King of Terrors, the most terrible of all miracles. (2.) When God strikes, vain are friends and physicians, and every human support. In that hour, the most infatuated soul will feel every creature-comfort and confidence to be vanity of vanities.

5. His family will fall with him. Death will erect his throne in the sinner’s tabernacle, nor leave it till ruin, like that which was poured on Sodom, hath utterly laid it waftly; because it is none of his, being gotten by fraud and oppression, or by his abuse justly forfeited, v. 15. Neither root nor branch shall remain; struck, as with the lightning’s blast, nor her shall inherit his estate, neither son nor nephew; nor so much as a creature be left in his desolate habitation, v. 19.

6. His memory shall perish. He thought to perpetuate a great name in the earth, but the remembrance of it shall be blotted from the aunts of time, v. 19. Darkness, utter and eternal, must receive him; driven from his prosperity reluctant and chased out of the world as a savage beall, whose death is a deliverance to the country, v. 18. Note, However great and honourable among men the prosperous sinner appears, his end will be to lie down in shame and everlasting contempt.

7. His contemporaries, amazed at God’s judgments, shall hear of his fall, and potently be astonished at the relation, v. 20.

8. Bildad form up his speech, with confidence of the truth of what he had spoken: Surely, such are the dwellings of the wicked, as above described; and this is the place, the miserable lot assigned the reprobate soul of him that knoweth not God; for ignorance of God is at the bottom of all sin, and ruin eternal the wages of it.

In all this description of a wicked man’s sufferings, there is an evident situation to Job’s case; afflicted in his person, his family, robbed and spoiled, seeing the desolations of his house, acknowledging the terrors he fell, and bemanning his hopeless wretchedness: and hence Bildad would infer, that being like the wicked in his sufferings, he must have resembled them in his sins.