Job 18 Bible study: The lamp of the wicked

Every word of this chapter after its first verse is Bildad's: "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered" (18:1). It is his second speech. His first was chapter 8, and since then Zophar and Eliphaz have spoken, and Job has answered each of them (11:1, 12:1, 15:1, 16:1). Bildad opens as he opened before: "How long will you hunt for words?" (18:2), as in "How long will you speak these things?" (8:2). Then, "Why are we counted as animals, which have become unclean in your sight?" (18:3). Job had said, "But ask the animals now, and they will teach you" (12:7); in Hebrew animals is the same word in both verses. Then, "You who tear yourself in your anger" (18:4) (tap tear). Job had said, "He has torn me in his wrath" (16:9): the same verb, and wrath there is 18:4's word for anger. And Bildad asks, "Or will the rock be removed out of its place?" (18:4) (tap removed). Those are Job's own words from chapter 14: "The rock is removed out of its place" (14:18). Keep in mind whose words these are. At the end of the book the LORD says to Eliphaz, "My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has" (42:7), and Bildad is named among those who then "did what the LORD commanded them" (42:9). The book doesn't say which of Bildad's words the LORD has in view, so these notes never treat Bildad's picture as the book's own teaching. They don't throw out every word of it either.

Job 18:5→leads toJohn 12:46

Bildad says, "Yes, the light of the wicked will be put out" (18:5), and of such a man, "He will be driven from light into darkness" (18:18). These are Bildad's words (18:1), and these notes don't treat them as the book's own teaching. Jesus said, "I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness" (John 12:46). John doesn't name Job or Bildad, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: who is left in darkness. Some read them together: Bildad tells of a light that goes out, and Jesus speaks of himself as the light that keeps whoever believes in him from remaining in darkness. Others read each in its own setting: Bildad's picture belongs to his argument with Job, and Jesus spoke of himself and of whoever believes in him, and said nothing of Job. Neither reading makes Bildad's picture the book's teaching, or says Job's losses came because his light went out.

נֵרnersay NER

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "lamp". Strong's: "a lamp (i.e. the burner) or light (literally or figuratively)". "His lamp above him will be put out" (18:6). It comes three times in the Hebrew of Job. The other two are Job's: "How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out" (21:17), and, remembering the days "when God watched over me" (29:2), "when his lamp shone on my head" (29:3). Proverbs has it with 18:6's verb for put out: "the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out" (Proverbs 13:9).