Job 18:4

The first clause must be rendered in English,

Thou who tearest thyself in thine anger.

The Heb. uses in preference the objective form, One who teareth himself in his anger, shall the earth be forsaken for thee? See on ch. Job 12:4. The words refer to ch. Job 16:9 it is not God who tears him, it is Job who tears himself in his insensate passion, cf. ch. Job 5:2.

shall the earth be forsaken i. e. depopulated and made a wilderness, where no man dwells; Leviticus 26:43; Isaiah 6:12; Isaiah 7:16. The desolation of the earth, which God has not created a waste but made to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18), and the removal of the fixed rock from its place, are figures which mean, overturning the fixed moral order of the universe established by God. Bildad asks if the current of the moral order of the world is to be interrupted or turned back for Job's sake, that he may escape the imputation of wickedness, or the penalty of it, and that his principles may be accepted? cf. ch. Job 16:18.