Job 18:2

Then he spoke impiously of God, saying that He tore him in His anger (ch. Job 16:9), and appealed to the earth and nature to rise up on his side (ch. Job 16:18).

Such things provoke the personal and moral indignation of Bildad alike. It seems to him that Job holds his brethren and him little higher than the beasts (although it was Job himself that was destitute of understanding), and that in his extravagant self-righteousness he flings them away from him as belonging to the class of the "unclean" (Job 18:2).

And it is not God that tears him in His anger; rather in his outrageous fury he is tearing himself. And does he suppose, as his appeal to the earth might suggest, that the eternal flow of law and order in the universe is to be interrupted for his sake that he may be reputed innocent, or that being guilty he may not suffer the penalty of his evil, and that his principles may prevail? (Job 18:4).

This question naturally leads over to the principal theme of the discourse, the certainty of the destruction of the wicked through the operation of the fixed order of the world and the moral instincts of mankind (Job 18:5).

ere you make an end of words Rather, how long will ye hunt for words, lit. set snares for words. Bildad begins with the same exclamation of impatient astonishment that he used on a former occasion, ch. Job 8:2, how long? quousque tandem abutere patientia nostra? By "hunting for words" he means making subtle and artificial attempts at finding arguments which were only words. He probably refers to the distinctions which Job, in wrestling with his great problem, drew between God and God, and his appeals to the one against the other. Such things seem subtleties to Bildad and but the theme of speakers; man's destiny in the world of God is a thing of more solid stuff, and its principles not so intangible.

mark, and afterwards Rather, understand. Bildad gives back Job's words, Thou hast hid their heart from understanding, ch. Job 17:4. It was not they but he that was without wisdom, and until he came to some admission of first principles talking was of little avail. In answering Job Bildad uses here the plur. ye, with reference no doubt to Job's identifying himself with the class of righteous sufferers persecuted by the wicked, ch. Job 17:6 seq.

The circumstances of the Author's time perhaps shine out through these allusions the collision of classes, the conflicting claims of parties to represent the true people of God, and the diverse solutions which various minds sought for the hard problem of the national affliction, which turned the servant of the Lord over into the hands of the wicked (ch. Job 16:11) and made him the servant of rulers (Isaiah 49:7).