Page 114 - Job

scenes listening to Him? But after his fluffed up feathers get cooled down a
little then he gets down to his narrow argument. Eliphaz makes it plain that
what he is about to say is not his own bright idea. This is the talk of the
ancestors. This is what the books have said. This is tradition. Verse 17
through 19,
“I will tell you, listen to me; and what I have seen I will also declare;
What wise men have told, and have not concealed from their fathers, to
whom alone the land was given, and no alien passed among them.”
In other words, Job, I am going to tell you something, and I did not make it
up. This is wisdom, and it is from the ancestors. They had this forever, and
no stranger came in and diluted the truth. You have heard it before. The
wicked suffer, Job, and you are suffering. Therefore, ergo, you are wicked.
His argument is basically that, but he divides it up into three facts. First he
says, the conscience of the wicked is troubled every day. Verse 20 and 21,
“The wicked man writhes in pain all his days, and numbered are the
years stored up for the ruthless. Sounds of terror are in his ears; While
at peace the destroyer comes upon him.”
Job, the wicked have a guilty conscience. Verse 24,
“Distress and anguish terrify him, they overpower him like a king
ready for the attack. Because he has stretched out his hand against
God and conducts himself arrogantly against the Almighty.”

And then he says the wicked always come to poverty. Verse 28,
“He has lived in desolate cities, in houses no one would inhabit, which
are destined to become ruins. He will not become rich, nor will his
wealth endure; And his grain will not bend down to the ground. He will
not escape from darkness; The flame will wither his shoots.”
Take a look at your life, Job. That is what happens to the wicked. And then
in verse 32 through 34, he says the wicked always die a premature death,
and Job, you are a dying man. Verse 32,
“It will be accomplished before his time, and his palm branch will not be
green. He will drop off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his
flower like the olive tree. For the company of the godless is barren, and
fire consumes the tents of the corrupt.
They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity, and their mind prepares
deception.”
Well, Job responds to Bildad’s accusation – you are wicked, Job, you are
very wicked – in chapters 16 and 17. Since he has already answered that

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