18 He is sent away from the light into the dark; he is forced out of the world.
A land of thick dark, without order, where the very light is dark.
He is gone like a dream, and is not seen again; he goes in flight like a vision of the night.
In the daytime it becomes dark for them, and in the sunlight they go feeling about as if it was night.
If you put far away the evil of your hands, and let no wrongdoing have a place in your tent;
And he will go through the land in bitter trouble and in need of food; and when he is unable to get food, he will become angry, cursing his king and his God, and his eyes will be turned to heaven on high; And he will be looking down on the earth, and there will be trouble and dark clouds, black night where there is no seeing.
But he will put a stop to them, and make them go in flight far away, driving them like the waste of the grain on the tops of the mountains before the wind, and like the circling dust before the storm. In the evening there is fear, and in the morning they are gone. This is the fate of those who take our goods, and the reward of those who violently take our property for themselves.
That very hour the order about Nebuchadnezzar was put into effect: and he was sent out from among men, and had grass for his food like the oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair became long as eagles' feathers and his nails like those of birds.
And he was sent out from among the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts', and he was living with the asses of the fields; he had grass for his food like the oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till he was certain that the Most High is ruler in the kingdom of men, and gives power over it to anyone at his pleasure.
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Commentary on Job 18 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 18
In this chapter Bildad makes a second assault upon Job. In his first discourse (ch. 8) he had given him encouragement to hope that all should yet be well with him. But here there is not a word of that; he has grown more peevish, and is so far from being convinced by Job's reasonings that he is but more exasperated.
In this he seems, all along, to have an eye to Job's complaints of the miserable condition he was in, that he was in the dark, bewildered, ensnared, terrified, and hastening out of the world. "This,' says Bildad, "is the condition of a wicked man; and therefore thou art one.'
Job 18:1-4
Bildad here shoots his arrows, even bitter words, against poor Job, little thinking that, though he was a wise and good man, in this instance he was serving Satan's design in adding to Job's affliction.
Job 18:5-10
The rest of Bildad's discourse is entirely taken up in an elegant description of the miserable condition of a wicked man, in which there is a great deal of certain truth, and which will be of excellent use if duly considered-that a sinful condition is a sad condition, and that iniquity will be men's ruin if they do not repent of it. But it is not true that all wicked people are visibly and openly made thus miserable in this world; nor is it true that all who are brought into great distress and trouble in this world are therefore to be deemed and adjudged wicked men, when no other proof appears against them; and therefore, though Bildad thought the application of it to Job was easy, yet it was not safe nor just. In these verses we have,
Job 18:11-21
Bildad here describes the destruction itself which wicked people are reserved for in the other world, and which, in some degree, often seizes them in this world. Come, and see what a miserable condition the sinner is in when his day comes to fall.