18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, And chased out of the world.
The land dark as midnight, Of the shadow of death, without any order, Where the light is as midnight.'"
He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: Yes, he shall be chased away like a vision of the night.
They meet with darkness in the day-time, And grope at noonday as in the night.
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, Don't let unrighteousness dwell in your tents.
They shall pass through it, sore distressed and hungry; and it shall happen that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse by their king and by their God, and turn their faces upward: and they shall look to the earth, and see, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and into thick darkness [they shall be] driven away.
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but he shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like the whirling dust before the storm. At evening, behold, terror; [and] before the morning they are no more. This is the portion of those who despoil us, and the lot of those who rob us.
and he was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the animals', and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys; he was fed with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the sky; until he knew that the Most High God rules in the kingdom of men, and that he sets up over it whoever he will.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 18
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.