Bildad the Shuhite - This is the last attack on Job; the others felt themselves foiled, though they had not humility enough to acknowledge it, but would not again return to the attack. Bildad has little to say, and that little is very little to the point. He makes a few assertions, particularly in reference to what Job had said in the commencement of the preceding chapter, of his desire to appear before God, and have his case tried by him, as he had the utmost confidence that his innocence should be fully proved. For this Bildad reprehends Job with arguments which had been brought forth often in this controversy, and as repeatedly confuted, Job 4:18; Job 15:14-16.

Then answered Bildad the Shuhite,.... Not to what Job had just now delivered, in order to disprove that, that men, guilty of the grossest crimes, often go unpunished in this life, and prosper and succeed, and die in peace and quietness, as other men; either because he was convinced of the truth of what he had said, or else because he thought he was an obstinate man, and that it was best to let him alone, and say no more to him, since there was no likelihood of working any conviction on him; wherefore he only tries to possess his mind of the greatness and majesty of God, in order to deter him from applying to God in a judicial way, and expecting redress and relief from him;
and said; as follows.

Bildad drops the question concerning the prosperity of wicked men; but shows the infinite distance there is between God and man. He represents to Job some truths he had too much overlooked. Man's righteousness and holiness, at the best, are nothing in comparison with God's, Psalm 89:6. As God is so great and glorious, how can man, who is guilty and impure, appear before him? We need to be born again of water and of the Holy Ghost, and to be bathed again and again in the blood of Christ, that Fountain opened, Zac 13:1. We should be humbled as mean, guilty, polluted creatures, and renounce self-dependence. But our vileness will commend Christ's condescension and love; the riches of his mercy and the power of his grace will be magnified to all eternity by every sinner he redeems.

1 Then began Bildad the Shuhite, and said:
2 Dominion and terror are with Him,
He maketh peace in His high places.
3 Is there any number to His armies,
And whom doth not His light surpass?
4 How could a mortal be just with God,
And how could one born of woman be pure?
5 Behold, even the moon, it shineth not brightly,
And the stars are not pure in His eyes.
6 How much less mortal man, a worm,
And the son of man, a worm!
Ultimum hocce classicum, observes Schultens, quod a parte triumvirorum sonuit, magis receptui canentis videtur, quam praelium renovantis. Bildad only repeats the two commonplaces, that man cannot possibly maintain his supposedly perverted right before God, the all-just and all-controlling One, to whom, even in heaven above, all things cheerfully submit, and that man cannot possibly be accounted spotlessly pure, and consequently exalted above all punishment before Him, the most holy One, before whom even the brightest stars do not appear absolutely pure. המשׁל is an inf. abs. made into a substantive, like השׁקט; the Hiph. (to cause to rule), which is otherwise causative, can also, like Kal, signify to rule, or properly, without destroying the Hiphil-signification, to exercise authority (vid., on Job 31:18); המשׁל therefore signifies sovereign rule. עשׂה, with הוּא to be supplied, which is not unfrequently omitted both in participial principal clauses (Job 12:17., Psalm 22:29; Isaiah 26:3; Isaiah 29:8; Isaiah 40:19, comp. Zac 9:12, where אני is to be supplied) and in partic. subordinate clauses (Psalm 7:10; Psalm 55:20; Habakkuk 2:10), is an expression of the simple praes., which is represented by the partic. used thus absolutely (including the personal pronoun) as a proper tense-form (Ew. 168, c, 306, d). Schlottman refers עשׂה to המשׁל ופהד; but the analogy of such attributive descriptions of God is against it. Umbreit and Hahn connect בּמרומיו with the subject: He in His heights, i.e., down from His throne in the heavens. But most expositors rightly take it as descriptive of the place and object of the action expressed: He establishes peace in His heights, i.e., among the celestial beings immediately surrounding Him. This, only assuming the abstract possibility of discord, might mean: facit magestate sua ut in summa pace et promptissima obedientia ipsi ministrent angeli ipsius in excelsis (Schmid). But although from Job 4:18; Job 15:15, nothing more than that even the holy ones above are neither removed from the possibility of sin nor the necessity of a judicial authority which is high above them, can be inferred; yet, on the other hand, from Job 3:8; Job 9:13 (comp. Job 26:12.), it is clear that the poet, in whose conception, as in scripture generally, the angels and the stars stand in the closest relation, knows of actual, and not merely past, but possibly recurring, instances of hostile dissension and titanic rebellion among the celestial powers; so that עשׂה שׁלום, therefore, is intended not merely of a harmonizing reconciliation among creatures which have been contending one against another, but of an actual restoration of the equilibrium that had been disturbed through self-will, by an act of mediation and the exercise of judicial authority on the part of God.

Answered - Not to that which Job spake last, but to that which seemed most reprovable in all his discourses; his censure of God's proceedings with him, and his desire of disputing the matter with him. Perhaps Bildad and the rest now perceived that Job and they did not differ so much as they thought. They owned that the wicked might prosper for a while. And Job owned, they would be destroyed at the last.