Job 8:8 | KingComments | STEP | While Eliphaz appeals to his own experience, Bildad relies on tradition. His claims come from wisdom of the past, from the traditions of the fathers ( ). You can read about this in their stories and sayings. Then Job will see that his arguments are correct because that is how it worked in the past. A man lives too short to acquire wisdom, and so he must rely on the wisdom of the ancestors. At least, that is Bildad’s interpretation. His thesis is that the collected and handed down insights of the ancestors teaches what he claims. Only a fool will argue against that. Then you get all previous generations against you. Surely you don’t want to think you know any better than all those people who have gone before you, do you? They all say that the righteous in this life will be rewarded and the wicked will have disasters over them. Let us not imagine anything, Bildad says, because “we are [only] of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are as a shadow” ( ). We just showed up and from the beginning we are a diminishing matter (cf. ). Before we know it, we have disappeared from the world stage again. What will we be able to observe in that short period of time in order to come to a well-founded conclusion? We shouldn’t think that in our short human life we can take a different view of history, let alone rewrite it. No, just listen to what the generations before us have been through. If you take their teaching to heart and let it speak to you, you will receive wisdom and speak as they did ( ). You will not be stubbornly holding on to your own views about the disasters that have struck you, but will join their findings. With his appeal to tradition Bildad completely misses the point. Life is indeed too short to come to an understanding in your own strength. The ancestors may indeed have acquired certain wisdom. Nevertheless, in order to get to know God’s thoughts, we must not turn to the past, but to God and His Word ( ). History teaches that a one-sided and exaggerated admiration for what ‘the ancestors’ have thought and learned has always hindered God’s work. No matter how much blessing there is in a spiritual inheritance, we learn to understand the truth only from the Word of God and through practicing fellowship with Him ourselves. God sometimes wants to bring old, forgotten truths back to the attention of His own at a given time. He wants to put in the right light other truths that are known, but applied one-sidedly and pushed forward too much. But when human statements, however beautiful and true they may be, are placed between God’s living and powerful Word and the believer, they only create obstacles to the workings of the Spirit.

‏ Job 8:8

The Light of the Past

While Eliphaz appeals to his own experience, Bildad relies on tradition. His claims come from wisdom of the past, from the traditions of the fathers (Job 8:8). You can read about this in their stories and sayings. Then Job will see that his arguments are correct because that is how it worked in the past. A man lives too short to acquire wisdom, and so he must rely on the wisdom of the ancestors.

At least, that is Bildad’s interpretation. His thesis is that the collected and handed down insights of the ancestors teaches what he claims. Only a fool will argue against that. Then you get all previous generations against you. Surely you don’t want to think you know any better than all those people who have gone before you, do you? They all say that the righteous in this life will be rewarded and the wicked will have disasters over them.

Let us not imagine anything, Bildad says, because “we are [only] of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are as a shadow” (Job 8:9). We just showed up and from the beginning we are a diminishing matter (cf. 1Chr 29:15). Before we know it, we have disappeared from the world stage again. What will we be able to observe in that short period of time in order to come to a well-founded conclusion? We shouldn’t think that in our short human life we can take a different view of history, let alone rewrite it.

No, just listen to what the generations before us have been through. If you take their teaching to heart and let it speak to you, you will receive wisdom and speak as they did (Job 8:10). You will not be stubbornly holding on to your own views about the disasters that have struck you, but will join their findings.

With his appeal to tradition Bildad completely misses the point. Life is indeed too short to come to an understanding in your own strength. The ancestors may indeed have acquired certain wisdom. Nevertheless, in order to get to know God’s thoughts, we must not turn to the past, but to God and His Word (1Cor 2:9-10). History teaches that a one-sided and exaggerated admiration for what ‘the ancestors’ have thought and learned has always hindered God’s work. No matter how much blessing there is in a spiritual inheritance, we learn to understand the truth only from the Word of God and through practicing fellowship with Him ourselves.

God sometimes wants to bring old, forgotten truths back to the attention of His own at a given time. He wants to put in the right light other truths that are known, but applied one-sidedly and pushed forward too much. But when human statements, however beautiful and true they may be, are placed between God’s living and powerful Word and the believer, they only create obstacles to the workings of the Spirit.