CHAPTER 8 Dec. 6 
Bildad’s First Speech
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, 2How long will you speak these things? Shall the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? 3Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert righteousness? 4If your children have sinned against him, He has delivered them into the hand of their disobedience. 5If you want to seek God diligently, make your supplication to the Almighty. 6If you were pure and upright, surely now He would awaken for you, and make the habitation of your righteousness prosperous. 7Though your beginning was small, yet your latter end would greatly increase. 8Please inquire of past generations. Find out about the learning of their fathers. 9For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow. 10Shall they not teach you, tell you, and utter words out of their heart? 11Can the papyrus grow up without mire? Can the rushes grow without water? 12While it is yet in its greenness, not cut down, it withers before any other reed. 13So are the paths of all who forget God. The hope of the godless man shall perish, 14whose confidence shall break apart, whose trust is in a spider’s web.  15He shall lean on his house, but it shall not stand. He shall cling to it, but it shall not endure. 16He is green before the sun. His shoots go forth over his garden. 17His roots are wrapped around the rock pile. He sees the place of stones. 18If he is destroyed from his place, then it shall deny him, saying, ‘I have not seen you’. 19Behold, this is the joy of his way: out of the earth, others shall spring. 20Behold, God will not cast away a blameless man, neither will He uphold the evildoers. 21He will still fill your mouth with laughter, your lips with shouting. 22Those who hate you shall be clothed with shame. The tent of the wicked shall be no more. 

Commentary

8:6 If you were pure and upright- The words of the friends suggest that their view was in fact that of the satan in the prologue; a case can be made that they are in fact the ‘satan’ / adversary figure. Satan quibbled with God's pronunciation of Job as perfect and upright (1:8). And here Bildad likewise seems to allude to this when he comments that if Job were indeed pure and upright, then God would help him. 
8:8-10 Bildad emphasizes the view of traditional wisdom; and one theme of Job is that traditionally accepted ideas about God are shown by His word and by actual experience to be wrong. Bildad insists that Job must have sinned because traditional wisdom taught that calamity is always the result of sin. We see here how wrong understandings lead to damaged personal relationships and tragic misjudgements in practice.