Albert Barnes Commentary Job 8:9

"(For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, Because our days upon earth are a shadow);" — Job 8:9 (ASV)

For we are but of yesterday - This means we have short lives. We have had only a few opportunities for observation compared with those who have gone before us. There can be no doubt that Bildad here refers to the longevity of preceding ages compared with the age of humans when he lived; the passage is therefore important for fixing the date of the poem.

It shows that human life had been reduced in Job's time to comparatively moderate limits and that an important change had occurred in its duration. This reduction began not long after the flood and probably continued gradually until it reached the present limit of seventy years. This passage proves that Job could not have lived in the time of greatest human longevity; compare the Introduction, Section 3.

And know nothing - The margin reads "not." So the Hebrew is literally, “we do not know.” The meaning is, ‘we have had comparatively few opportunities for observation. Because of the comparative shortness of our lives, we see only a little of the course of events. Our fathers lived through longer periods and could mark the results of human conduct more accurately.’

One suggestion may be made here, perhaps of considerable importance in explaining the course of argument in this book. Job’s friends maintained that the righteous would be rewarded in this life and that the wicked would be overtaken by calamity. It may seem remarkable that they urged this so strenuously when, in the actual course of events as we now see them, there appears to be so slender a foundation for it in fact.

But can this not be accounted for by Bildad’s remark in the verse under consideration? They appealed to their fathers; they relied on the results of experience in those ancient times. When people lived 900 or 1,000 years, and when one generation was longer than twelve generations are now, this outcome would be much more likely than it is with human life as it is now ordered. Things would have time to work themselves right.

In that long span of time, the wicked would likely be overtaken by disgrace and calamity, and the righteous would outlive the slanders and false accusations of their enemies, and meet in their old age with the ample rewards of virtue. If people now lived through the same long period, substantially the same thing would occur. A person’s character, if remembered at all, is fully established long before a thousand years have passed, and posterity does justice to the righteous and the wicked.

If people lived during that time instead of being merely remembered, the same thing would likely occur. Justice would be done to character, and the world would generally give a person the honor they deserved. This phenomenon may have been observed in the long lives of the people before the flood. The result of that observation may have been embodied in proverbs, fragments of poems, and traditional sayings, and recorded by the sages of Arabia as indisputable maxims. With these maxims, Job's friends came to the controversy with him. Forgetful of the change necessarily made by the shortening of human life, they proceeded to apply their maxims to him without mercy; and because he was overwhelmed with calamity, they assumed that he must therefore have been a wicked man.

Our days upon earth are a shadow - Comparisons of this kind are quite common in the Scriptures; see the notes on Job 7:6. A similar figure occurs in 1 Chronicles 29:15:

For we are strangers before thee,
And sojourners, as were all our fathers:
Our days upon earth are as a shadow,
Yea, there is no abiding.

A similar expression occurs in Aeschylus, Agamemnon v. 488, as quoted by Drusius and Dr. Good:

– εἴδωλον σκιᾶς (eidōlon skias) –
– The image or semblance of a shade –

So in Pindar, people are called σκιᾶς ὄναρ (skias onar) – the dream of a shade; and so by Sophocles, καπνοῦ σκιὰ (kapnou skia) – the shadow of smoke. All these mean the same thing: that human life is brief and transitory. Bildad intends to apply this not to humanity in general, but to the people of the age in which he lived, who were disqualified by the shortness of their lives from making extended observations.