We begin to understand Job’s visitors do not grasp what parables are, and do not comprehend symbolic language. God has always preferred parable as the means to communicate to mankind because it winnows out the spiritually dead. Only those with a spiritual awareness can receive the parabolic message. Jesus was not doing anything new when He explained to His disciples that parables were the proper means to teach truth that is beyond the human intellect. This merely confirms Job’s assessment that this trio of visitors were not spiritually aware, but had only their human reason to rely on, and it wasn’t enough.
Bildad is palpably angry at the insulting implication that he and his friends are not equipped to grasp reality. He warns Job to mind his manners before his elders or keep his mouth shut. Bildad asks just who is the senseless wild beast here. Is it they, as Job seems to suggest, or is it Job who wildly tears at himself in frustration? Does Job expect the created order of things to be changed just for him?
Then Bildad launches into a litany of parables, figures of speech about what happens to the wicked. He seems to take them rather literally and uses the dire picture to try scaring Job into repenting. The whole thing is rather nice, but wholly irrelevant to the case before him. This is false reciprocation logic: He assumes that because God does not favor the wicked, only the wicked are without His worldly blessings. It doens’t work the same both directions. Even in modern times we see how this turns logic on its head. The wicked do indeed suffer as he describes, but all too often not literally, not in this life. Instead, the righteous often suffer for no just cause. Perhaps that has happened all too often under Bildad’s own leadership as an elder, and it would embarrass him to admit it.
Either way, we note that Bildad makes the common false assumption that bad things in this world happen only to bad people. That has never been true.
