Lent With Job and Saint Thomas Aquinas: Chapter Eight

Job’s friend Bildad puts his two cents in and reminds us of one constant in the affairs of Man.  When there is a complicated discussion going on, and several people are involved, at least one of the participants is going to be completely clueless:

In the discourse which Job just finished, he had responded to the speech of Eliphaz. He showed Eliphaz was mistaken in a deep and efficacious way. But Bildad of Shuah, who agreed with the same opinion of Eliphaz, did not understand the profundity of Blessed Job and so he speaks against the answer of Blessed Job like men usually speak against the opinions they do not understand. For men who do not understand the minds of others speaking are usually deficient in two ways. One of these is because they do not know when the speaker arrives at the conclusion he proposes. Another is because they are not able to understand the order of the discourse of the speaker. This is clearly shown in the speech of Bildad when the text says, “Bildad spoke next, ‘How long will you go on talking like that?’” For Job seemed to him to talk too long because he did not consider or understand the conclusion Job wished to draw in his discourse. Similarly, he did not grasp the order of the things which Job had said, namely, how they had been connected to one another. So he continues, “and prolong the high spirit of the speech of your mouth?” For he concluded that because Job had explained many things whose order he did not understand that his words were haphazard like a man who has no ability to reason, saying various things without rational order, spurred on by the impulse of his spirit.

Also, since, as was said, Bildad did not understand the intention of Job, he takes his words in an entirely different way than intended and tries to deduce that they were not fitting. For in what he said, Job wanted to disprove the proposition of Eliphaz who thought that adversities in this world happened because of the sins of men and that if the sinners afflicted by God were converted, they would return to their former state of prosperity. So he spoke against both these ideas. Against the first he said, “Would that my sins and the calamity which I suffer were weighed in a balance!” (6:2) Against the second he said, “I have despaired; I will not live longer to any purpose,” (7:16) and many other things like this as is clear in the verses above. When Job said these things, he intended to prove that punishment for sinners and rewards for justice should be hoped for from God in this life. But Bildad did not know about the other life. So he took these words as though Job meant that God does not punish sins or reward good deeds, which seems contrary to divine justice. So Bildad makes his first proposition when he says, “Can God deceive judgment, or the Almighty falsify justice?” as if to say: This follows from your words if God punishes man in this world, though sinless or beyond the desert of his sins, or if he does not repay those turning back to him with good things. Note that justice is corrupted in two ways: by the cunning of an astute man and by the violence of a powerful man. There are, however, both perfect wisdom and omnipotence in God. Yet the name wisdom in God does not mean he overturns judgment like an astute man, nor does omnipotence in God mean that he subverts what is just like a violent man.

Go here to read the rest.  Bildad illustrates the futility of so many human debates when rejected arguments by one of the participants are repackaged and re-said by another participant.  As a judge once said to one of my colleagues, Counsel, no matter how many times you attempt the transformation in this case, the sow’s ears of facts in this case are not going to be changed into a silk purse, no matter the different phrasings you use.