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Job 8 Bible study: Does God pervert justice?
Bildad's first speech runs on if: if your children sinned, if you were pure and upright. The book had already called Job "blameless and upright" (1:1), with the very words Bildad uses, and the LORD said Job was ruined "without cause" (2:3). And the "latter end" Bildad speaks of is the word of the book's last chapter: "the LORD blessed the latter end of Job" (42:12).
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“Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?”
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“Bildad speaks of a blameless man, the word the book's first verse uses for Job.”
Is that in Job 8, or not? Make your call.
What's really going on
"Then Bildad the Shuhite answered"
Every word of this chapter after its first verse is Bildad's: "Then Bildad the Shuhite answered" (8:1). He is the second of "Job’s three friends" (2:11) to speak: Eliphaz spoke first (chapters 4-5), and Job answered him (chapters 6-7). He opens, "How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your mouth be a mighty wind?" (8:2). Job had asked his friends, "Do you intend to reprove words, since the speeches of one who is desperate are as wind?" (6:26); in Hebrew wind is the same word in both verses. Then comes Bildad's question: "Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?" (8:3) (tap pervert, justice, righteousness). 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 what Bildad says as the book's own verdict. They don't throw out every word either: other Scripture also says that God does no wrong, and the honest question below sets 8:3 beside it.
Where it leads to Jesus
"Won’t God avenge his chosen ones"
Job 8:3leads toLuke 18:7-8
Bildad asks, "Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?" (8:3). Jesus told of a judge "who didn’t fear God and didn’t respect man" (Luke 18:2), and a widow who kept coming to him, saying, "Defend me from my adversary!" (Luke 18:3). Then he said, "Won’t God avenge his chosen ones who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? I tell you that he will avenge them quickly" (Luke 18:7-8). Jesus doesn't name Job or Bildad, so setting them side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: whether God does justice. Some read the two together: Bildad asks whether God perverts justice, and Jesus sets God beside a judge he calls unrighteous (Luke 18:6) and says God will avenge those who cry to him. Others read each in its own setting: Jesus speaks of "his chosen ones" and ends with a question, "when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8), while Bildad's question comes with his words about Job's children (8:4) and "If you were pure and upright" (8:6), and the LORD's verdict on the friends' words is 42:7. Neither reading makes Job a picture of the widow or of anyone else.
Honest questions
Questions people ask about Job 8
That was a taste
The rest of Job 8 is waiting in Favor
- "If your children have sinned"
- "Please inquire of past generations"
- "Your latter end would greatly increase"
- Job's last words, in Bildad's first
- "Blameless", said back
- 8 questions as you read
- 14 more Hebrew words
- A short check at the end
- Your notes, saved as you go
Favor reads the Bible in order, so you'll reach Job 8 with everything before it in view. First week free, then $10 a month per person.
The Hebrew word behind it
עָוַתavatsay a-VAT
Brown-Driver-Briggs: "be bent, crooked", and in the form used here, "pervert justice". Strong's: "to wrest". Bildad asks it twice in one verse: "Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness?" (8:3). It is his question, not the book's verdict. The verb comes eleven times in the Hebrew Bible, four of them in Job. The other two in Job are Job's and Elihu's. Job says, "know now that God has subverted me" (19:6), where subverted is this verb. Elihu says, "neither will the Almighty pervert justice" (34:12), with this verb and the word of 8:3's justice.
For your group
Job 8 Bible study questions
- 1Bildad said "If your children have sinned" (8:4) to a father who had been told of his sons and daughters, "they are dead" (1:18-19). When you've been grieving, what words helped you, and what words hurt, even when they were meant to help?
- 2Bildad says, "Please inquire of past generations" (8:8). What have you learned from people of faith who went before you, and how do you tell when an old saying doesn't fit the person in front of you?
- 3"Does God pervert justice?" (8:3). When has something happened that made it hard for you to see God's justice, and what did you do with that question?
Leading a group? In Favor, everyone reads Job 8 during the week and answers these questions privately. Answers stay sealed until you meet, then appear together, and you can print the week's sheet.
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Questions
What is Favor?
Favor is a Bible study app that explains every chapter as you read: the Hebrew and Greek behind the words, the details most readers miss, and how each part of the Bible leads to Jesus. Read on your own, or start a Bible study with friends, family or your church.
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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Hebrew and Greek words are checked against the original-language texts and public-domain lexicons. What we believe · Favor home