12. Thomas Edward Brown (1830–97), British poet.
The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers 55
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the InterrogatIve plaster
Job 8
If thou couldst empty all thyself of self. Like to a shell dishabited, Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf, And say—"This is not dead,"— And fill thee with Himself instead. But thou art all replete with very thou, And hast such shrewd activity, That, when He comes, He says:—"This is enow Unto itself—'Twere better let it be: It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."
the New Testament saint should be leagues ahead of the Old Testament saint, but in reality no character in the New Testament is superior to those in the Old Testament. The revelation of Redemption given through our Lord Jesus Christ is retrospective in our day; in the Old Testament it is prospective. Job goes down to the heart of the problems that make the Redemption necessary, while Bildad, with his interrogative plaster and pious dealing with the problems, is really shirking the whole thing.
T. E. Brown12
2. The Place of "Doth" ( Job 8:3) Doth God pervert judgement? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?
Bildad differs from Eliphaz in his condemnation of Job: Eliphaz declares straight off that Job is wrong, while Bildad takes another line—that of asking questions; neither of them come anywhere near the reason for Job's suffering. There is an element of "Yes—but" in us all, and for most of us the problems that are nearly strangling a man have no meaning, they seem extravagant and wild. Bildad did not begin to detect where the real problem of Job's suffering lay, and we must beware in our attitude toward people who are suffering that we do not blunder by imagining our point of view to be the only one. Bildad tries the application of the interrogative plaster, he puts Job off by asking questions. That is generally the way of the man who refuses to face problems.
The trick of the sincere shirker is indicated in Bildad, which is always the result of being hit unexpectedly. We are all sincere shirkers, more or less; when we find ourselves suddenly discerned we turn the discernment off to something else for the time being (cf. John 4:16–20). In putting these abstractions before Job, Bildad is implying that Job's problem is not so difficult to understand: his suffering is caused by his own wrongdoing, and God's judgement is perfectly right. It is a trying thing to continue with a man who persists in giving an abstract supposition as a concrete fact.
1. The Plaint of "How" ( Job 8:1–2) Then answered Bildad the Shuhite and said, How long wilt thou speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?
3. The Philosophy of "If " ( Job 8:4–6) If thy children have sinned against him, . . . if thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, . . . if thou wert pure and upright. . . .
Bildad turns attention away from what is making Job speak to his actual words—"Why do you talk so much?"—but he does not take the trouble to find out the reason. When we come across a foul-mouthed, blasphemous man any number of us are ready to reprove him for the one who will try to discover why he speaks thus. Job is looking for someone who will understand what lies behind his talk, but he finds only those who are far removed from his problem.
The implication behind all these suppositions is: "Even if you are as wrong as Eliphaz has made out, you are not suffering so much as you imagine, and there is no big problem at the heart of things. God is not unjust, but you are, and that is the reason for it all." When problems are pressing very hard there is always someone who brings a suggestion of "if," or "but," or "how," to take us off the track. If our problems can be solved by other men, they are not problems but simply muddles. When we come to the real downright problems of life, which have no explicit answer saving by the Designer of life, we are exactly where Job was, and we can understand his petulance with those who tried to answer him. If Job's friends had remained dumb and reverent with what they did
To say that because Job lived in another dispensation therefore what he went through does not apply to us, is an easy, artificial shifting of the ground. There are characteristics which are different, but the problems manifested in the Book of Job remain the same to this day. According to consistent argument,
12. Thomas Edward Brown (1830–97), British poet.