Bildad batters Job over his perceived disdain for traditional wisdom and then barrages him with a large dose of such wisdom, detailing the many ways in which the wicked allegedly receive their just deserts. In this Bildad resumes the theme taken up by Eliphaz in 15:17–35 and the citation of wisdom clichés that he practiced in his preceding discourse. The unstated premise in confining the discussion to the fate of the wicked is that if there is retribution for them, there will be justice for the righteous as well. The companions, however, no longer regard Job, who stubbornly clings to his innocence, as righteous.
[18:1] Up spoke Bildad the Shuhite and he said:
[2] “How long will you (men) put an end to discourse?1
Once you understand, then we can speak.”2
[3–4] Why do you think of us as animals?
Why do we seem3 to you brutish?4
He who tears himself apart in his anger—5
For you will the earth be made desolate?6
(For you) a mountain moved from its place?7
[5–6] The light of the wicked really does wane,
And the flame of his fire fails to glow;
The light goes dark in his habitation,
And his lamp goes out on him.8
[7] His pernicious9 steps are shortened;10
His schemes make him stumble.11
[8–10] For he is caught by his feet in a net!
Wherever he walks there’s a mesh!
His heel is seized by a trap;
He is held fast by a snare.
A trip-cord is buried for him in the ground,
And a catch for him by the path.
[11] Horrors terrify him all about;12
Causing his legs to tremble.13
[12] Hunger exhausts14 his strength,
And disaster awaits his stumble!15
[13] Someone consumes the limbs of his skin,16
Death’s Firstborn17 consumes his limbs.
[14] He18 is cut off from his secure habitation;19
And he’s led20 to the King of Horrors.21
[15] Lilith22 will dwell in his habitation;
Sulfur’ll be strewn over his estate.
[16] Below, his roots will dry out;
And above, his foliage will wither.23
[17] His reputation disappears from the land,
And his good name is gone from the countryside.24
[18] He is driven from light into darkness,
Banished from th’inhabited world.
[19] He has no son or scion among his people;25
Nor any remnant where he resides.
[20] Westerners are appalled at his day-of-doom,
And Easterners are seized with alarm.26
[21] Yes, these are the dwellings of the depraved,
The place of one who knows not El.27
1. Bildad begins by mocking the opening of Job’s last discourse and then goes on to charge him with being crazed (verse 4). That verse 2 is a paraphrase of Job is clear from the use of the plural—a clear sign that the companions are being addressed. The phrase (literally) “ends to words (millin)” echoes Job’s pseudo-quotation of the friends in 16:3, “end to words (dibrei) of wind.”
2. Job had told his friends to be silent and just listen to him (13:13).
3. Reading the singular rather than plural suffix together with the ancient Greek translation.
4. Reading netammonu (compare timtem in later Hebrew) for nitminu, which seems to have been taken by the Masorah as a deviant form of “we are tainted.”
5. An insulting reference to Job, throwing Job’s use of the phrase “(God’s) anger raged” (16:9) back at him, but in a deconstructed form (separating the terms of the idiom and giving them a literal sense). Accusing Job of unrestrained anger pegs him as a fool (see 5:2).
6. Literally, “abandoned”; compare the curse in Leviticus 26:43.
7. An echo of Job in 14:18.
8. An elaboration of the conventional wisdom of Proverbs 13:9. The extinction of the hearth fire can suggest the extinction of progeny; see 2 Samuel 14:7.
9. Ironically also “his strong steps.”
10. The wicked’s schemes are thwarted—an echo of Job in 17:11, who complains that his plans have been frustrated.
11. Reading wa-takshilehu for wa-tashlikehu “throws him down” on the basis of Proverbs 4:12, which is alluded to here.
12. Bildad’s enumeration of disasters befalling the wicked recalls Eliphaz’s itemization of the seven disasters from which the righteous will be saved (5:19–22).
13. Reading we-hiplitsuhu for we-hepitsuhu “they scattered him,” which is inapt in context. The phrase is drawn from Isaiah 21:4; compare Job 9:6; 21:6.
14. Reading yekalleh ra‘ab for yehi ra‘eb “let (his strength) be hungry”; see Genesis 41:30 where the verb killah is predicated of ra‘ab in the phrase “and the famine will destroy the land.”
15. Compare Psalm 38:18. A different Hebrew term from that rendered “stumble” in verse 7 above.
16. “Skin” is here a metonym for the body. The subject of the consumption is not specified here—it will be specified in the next clause. There may be a superstitious reluctance to name the demonic personality.
17. “Death” is here personified—the Canaanite god Mot (Death), whose image as ravenously devouring the living is found in Habakkuk 2:5. The “firstborn” of Mot is apparently a name for a dreadful disease—like the skin disease from which Job suffers. In Biblical Hebrew “death” sometimes denotes a plague or disease (see Job 27:15).
18. The wicked.
19. “His tent.” Contrast the proverbial fate of the righteous in 5:24 and 12:6.
20. Literally, “it leads him”; the antecedent would seem to be “his schemes” in verse 7, which in Hebrew is a feminine singular like the verb in this clause (compare Ibn Ezra). The two verses are linked by the noun “step” there and its cognate verb “to lead to,” used here.
21. Apparently another name for Death. The reference is to personified death or a plague demon, not necessarily the Canaanite god Mot, who is never called “king.”
22. Reading lilit for MBLYLW, which is read confusedly, as one or two words, in different Masoretic traditions; the Greek reads “in his night.” A feminine singular subject is required, and the ancient female demon Lilith is found together with two other terms from our verse—“sulfur” and “estate”—in the curse against Edom in Isaiah 34 (see verses 9, 13, 14; compare Driver-Gray).
23. That is, his lineage will be wiped out. Compare Amos 2:9. Bildad revisits kindred images in Job 8:11–13 and 15:32–34.
24. Job will complain of the damage his reputation suffered within his community in chapter 29.
25. Compare Isaiah 14:22. Contrast Eliphaz’s forecast of progeny for Job in 5.25.
26. For the correct understanding of the terms for “Westerners” and “Easterners,” see 23:8; also Joel 2:20; Zechariah 14:8.
27. Some interpreters understand this verse to be spoken by the Westerners and Easterners of verse 20, but this pithy conclusion is of a piece with Bildad’s prior one in 8:22; and compare the conclusion of Zophar’s discourse in 20:29.