Job 8 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 8 Short Summary:

In Job 8, Job’s second friend, Bildad spoke up for the first time. He wasted no time rebuking Job for pretending to be righteous. Bildad had a very oversimplified view of God. He thought God would always bless righteous people and always humble evil people. His view convinced him that Job was guilty of some kind of hidden sin, and he wasn’t shy about rebuking Job even though he had no proof of Job’s sin.

Job 8 Bible Study

SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB

• Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan

• Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution

• Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.

• Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost

WHEN:

• The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).

• I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.

KEY CHARACTERS:

• Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.

• Bildad – One of Job’s 3 friends. He was the second of the three to accuse Job of sin.

WHERE:

• Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.

OUTLINE:

• BILDAD ACCUSES JOB OF SECRET SIN (8:1-11):

  • Bildad the Shuhite was the second of Job’s friends to speak.

  • He immediately rebuked Job and accused him of speaking out of place.

  • He said, “How long will you say these things… Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?” (8:2-3).

  • Bildad assumed that God would never allow hard times to befall a righteous man, that wouldn’t be justice (at least in Bildad’s eyes), so Job was clearly wrong in advocating for his own innocence.

  • Bildad was very black and white. He seemed to believe that God could only allow good to happen to righteous people and could only allow bad to happen to evil people. As we’ve discussed in previous studies, this was a significant oversimplification.

  • Bildad went to far as to not-so-subtly suggest that Job’s children were sinners and their fate proved it (8:4).

  • He told Job to plead to God for mercy, to purify his life, and then God would certainly deliver him out of his calamity and sickness.

  • Bildad appealed to the wisdom of their forefathers to back up his view of the nature of God. Some of the forefathers held a similar oversimplified view of the nature of God, so Bildad used them as a source of authority.

• BILDAD’S METAPHORS (8:12-22):

  • Bildad illustrated his points with a series of metaphors.

  • His first metaphor utilized the papyrus plant. A papyrus reed cannot flourish without water, just as a man cannot flourish without God’s blessing.

  • He then used the papyrus to illustrate those who forget about God, because the papyrus withers very quickly. It is a frail plant that goes from flowering one day to withering the next. In a similar way, God can cause a wicked man to go from flourishing to withering in very little time.

  • Bildad employed other word pictures to talk about the wicked. These included a spider’s web, a poorly constructed house, and a plant rooted in stone.

  • Bildad concluded his discourse restating his black and white thinking. He confidently stated that God would never reject a righteous man or bless an evil man.

  • He told Job repentance was his way back to a life of blessing.

APPLICATION

• There is a lot we can learn from wise men of the past, but they should never be used as our final source of authority.

• Bildad pointed out that his view of God was shared by many of the forefathers of their people, but we know that Bildad’s explanation for Job’s suffering was wrong. He got God’s nature wrong, and evidently so did his forefathers.  

• In the modern day, it is very common to hear people cite famous preachers, popes, reformers, biblical scholars, or commentary writers to give weight to their view on a particular issue. But the views of those famous men are only valuable so far as they align with the Word of God.

• It didn’t matter how many of the forefather’s were in line with Bildad, they were all wrong!

• It doesn’t matter how many famous historical figures we can reference that share our view on a particular religious matter, that isn’t what makes it right.

• Famous men are not the ultimate standard of truth. What God has revealed to men in His Word is the ultimate standard of truth.

• It’s better to stand alone with the Word of God than to stand with 1,000 famous men apart from it.