Matthew Henry Commentary Job 8

Job spoke much to the purpose; but Bildad, like an eager, angry disputant, dismisses it all with this: "How long will you speak these things?" People's meaning is not understood correctly, and then they are rebuked as if they were evildoers. Even in disputes on religion, it is too common to treat others with harshness and their arguments with contempt.

Bildad's discourse shows that he did not have a favorable opinion of Job's character. Job acknowledged that God did not pervert judgment; yet it did not therefore follow that his children were castaways, or that they were punished for some great transgression. Extraordinary afflictions are not always the punishment of extraordinary sins; sometimes they are the trials of extraordinary graces: in judging another's case, we should take the favorable side.

Bildad gives Job hope that if he were indeed upright, he would yet see a good end to his present troubles. This is God's way of enriching the souls of His people with graces and comforts. The beginning is small, but the progress is to perfection.

Dawning light grows to noonday.

Bildad speaks insightfully about hypocrites and evildoers, and the fatal end of all their hopes and joys. He proves this truth—the destruction of the hopes and joys of hypocrites—by an appeal to former times. Bildad refers to the testimony of the ancients. Those teach best who speak words from their heart, who speak from an experience of spiritual and divine things.

A rush growing in marshy ground, looking very green but withering in dry weather, represents the hypocrite's religious profession, which is maintained only in times of prosperity. The spider's web, spun with great skill but easily swept away, represents a person's pretensions to religion when without the grace of God in their heart. A merely formal professor flatters himself in his own eyes, does not doubt his salvation, is secure, and deceives the world with his vain confidences.

The flourishing of the tree, planted in the garden, striking its roots down to the rock, yet after a time cut down and thrown aside, represents wicked people who, when most firmly established, are suddenly thrown down and forgotten. This doctrine of the vanity of a hypocrite's confidence, or the prosperity of a wicked person, is sound; but it was not applicable to the case of Job, if confined to the present world.

Bildad here assures Job that as he was, so he would fare; therefore, they concluded that as he fared, so he was. God will not cast away an upright man; he may be cast down for a time, but he will not be cast away forever. Sin brings ruin on persons and families.

Yet to argue that Job was an ungodly, wicked man was unjust and uncharitable. The mistake in these reasonings arose from Job's friends not distinguishing between the present state of trial and discipline and the future state of final judgment.

May we choose the portion, possess the confidence, bear the cross, and die the death of the righteous; and in the meantime, be careful neither to wound others by rash judgments nor to distress ourselves needlessly about the opinions of our fellow creatures.