Satan’s watchword: “Prey without ceasing.” So you can probably guess what ours should be.
It has been ten chapters since we last heard from Bildad. That should be long enough to come up with something fresh. But oh no! He begins exactly the same way. “How long will you speak these things” (Job 8:2). “How long till you put an end to words?” (18:2). It’s a clue that he’s going to use the same arguments in Round 2 that he used the first time. Have you met people like that? They think that repeating something over and over makes it more convincing every time they say it. You wish heaven’s message would get through to them: “You have skirted this mountain long enough” (Deut 2:3). Of course, there’s a place for purposeful repetition as an effective teaching method. The man who never repeats himself may never have said anything worth repeating. Bildad’s tactic is to wear Job down by this bellicose barrage. But if you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is to STOP DIGGING. They say a rut is a grave with the ends kicked out, and once you’ve worn a rut deep enough, that’s all you can see in every direction. There is no elevating language here. If we take Job out as the focus of Bildad’s description of a wicked man, we find a helpful autopsy report of what sin does to a person. First, he’s a darkness-dweller (vv 5-6). As a result, his path is littered with danger; traps and snares are everywhere (vv 7-12), with “destruction…at his side,” dogging his steps. Fear and regret devour him one bite at a time (vv 13-16). It’s as if an earthquake of uncertainty roils under him wherever he goes. He’s doomed to be forgotten “and chased out of the world” (v 18, see vv 17-20). This, says Bildad, is the man “who does not know God” (v 21). Oh how desperately we need a Savior! Oh how glorious it is to be saved!