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Summary

Job 18:1–4 – Bildad’s impatience

What happens: Bildad rebukes Job for hunting words and asks when he will end. He accuses Job of tearing himself in anger. He implies the world will not be altered for Job’s sake.

What it means: Impatience shuts ears to pain. Pride speaks as if it guards the moral order. God calls counselors to patience and humility.

Job 18:5–10 – Traps for the wicked

What happens: Bildad says the light of the wicked is put out. Snares, nets, and traps seize him on every side. His own schemes trip him.

What it means: Evil often rebounds on the evildoer. Yet not every sufferer is wicked. Wisdom applies warnings carefully.

Job 18:11–21 – Terrible end and erased memory

What happens: Bildad describes terrors frightening the wicked, disease consuming skin, and roots dried up. Memory of him perishes from the earth. He ends by saying such is the place of him who does not know God.

What it means: For those who reject God, judgment is real. But turning this picture on Job is unjust. God’s people should warn about judgment with tears, not with triumph.

Application

  • Be slow to accuse and quick to listen.
  • Use warnings about sin to call people to God, not to score points.
  • Remember that not all suffering is punishment.
  • Pray for the discernment to separate patterns from persons.

Bible

1Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,

2How long will it be ere ye make an end of words? mark, and afterwards we will speak.

3Wherefore are we counted as beasts, and reputed vile in your sight?

4He teareth himself in his anger: shall the earth be forsaken for thee? and shall the rock be removed out of his place?

5Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine.

6The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with him.

7The steps of his strength shall be straitened, and his own counsel shall cast him down.

8For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare.

9The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail against him.

10The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.

11Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet.

12His strength shall be hungerbitten, and destruction shall be ready at his side.

13It shall devour the strength of his skin: even the firstborn of death shall devour his strength.

14His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it shall bring him to the king of terrors.

15It shall dwell in his tabernacle, because it is none of his: brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation.

16His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off.

17His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.

18He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.

19He shall neither have son nor nephew among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings.

20They that come after him shall be astonied at his day, as they that went before were affrighted.

21Surely such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him that knoweth not God.

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