Job Chapter 8
Bildad the Schmuck
Why is Casablanca a classic and Mrs. Miniver just old? Both came out in the 1940s. Both have problematic “of their time” elements. Yet Casablanca still has the power to surprise and move its audience. A classic has the power to feel contemporary no matter when it came out. Citizen Kane made me laugh hard when the egotistic millionaire protagonist lost the election and had a “Fraud at the Polls” headline ready to go. Both Purple Rain and Sketches of Spain are more contemporary than 99% of last year's popular music.
Then we have Bildad's response to Job’s most emotional speech thus far: “How long will you keep talking? Your words are like the wind.”
So many modern equivalents – blah blah, tl;dr, laughing emoji, fart sound, loud sighing, eye roll, “so what?”, “someone needs a nap”, sarcastic gif, etc, etc, etc.
Pour out your heart. Scream with rage. Put all the bathos and rhetoric in hopes that anyone will understand and care. Someone like Bildad will dismiss everything. They don't want to hear you. They didn't pay attention. They just waited for you to pause so they could tell you to shut up in the nastiest way possible.
If you're lucky they won't be one of your best friends.
Bildad's fart sound response wouldn't hurt if he was a random internet troll. He's not a high school bully or a distant cousin trying to sign Job up for Amway. He's one of Job's best friends. When Job's children died and he lost everything and his skin cracked open, most of Job's friends fell away. Even his wife suggested suicide. Bildad was one of the three who actually came to comfort him.
In a book full of tragedy, it's still heartbreaking that Job's best friends in the world are assholes.
Unlike Eliphaz and Zophar, Bildad has nothing to offer beyond disrespect. Eliphaz means well and Zophar is genuinely angry. Bildad is dismissive and stupid.
After that opening, Bildad keeps digging with “if your sons sinned, then of course, G-d killed them.” Bildad genuinely believes that only the sinners die. Should we even listen to Bildad after that opening? In the Eliphaz chapter, I speculated on Eliphaz as a mediocre preacher or rabbi talking from the pulpit. By contrast, Bildad is the Sunday School teacher who gets in trouble for telling Billy that his mother deserved to die.
At least when Bildad says that people without G-d are like rushes without mire or reeds without water, he seems to be responding to Job. Job did ask G-d to leave him alone and act like the deist version of G-d who just winds up the universe and lets it go. Bildad contradicts Job's most recent speech and ignores all the faith and sacrifices the preceded it.
Bildad actually thinks that a lifetime of faith is destroyed by an angry speech. Bildad only believes in grand gestures. Job's dynamic relationship with G-d full of faith and anger and doubt and love and recrimination bothers Bildad. Bildad is selling childish faith without variation. Did your son die? He sinned. Why are you asking G-d why it happened? That's blasphemy.
In return for nonsense unthinking faith, Bildad promises riches. Surely G-d will help you if you are pure and upright. If you believe in G-d and don't question the theological implications of poverty, dead children and skin cancer, G-d will save you. G-d will give you presents. G-d only hurts the bad people.
Bildad definitely believes in the prosperity gospel.
Like conspiracy theories and macroeconomics, he never has to entertain challenges. If G-d didn't give you everything then you had doubts. “You didn't clap hard enough. Tinkerbell is dead.” (thank you Christopher Durang).
I first encountered with meshuggas when I was a young Lutheran at Wednesday confirmation classes. One night we discussed faith healing and I volunteered that my feet were dry and cracked. Next thing I know, the group leader was holding my feet and praying over them. While praying, he implored me to clear my mind of all doubts. If I didn't believe, truly believe, the prayers wouldn't work.
I recognized this fallacy as a bullshit loophole, spoken to explain failure. I was 12.
You might say that all medicine requires belief. I believe that I can control my diabetes through diet and exercise so I go to the gym. Because I believe in vaccines, I get a regular flu shot. I believe in germ theory. I wash my hands before I handle food.
Only germ theory is a consistently supported and researched theory with results. Faith healing is a fantasy that resists doubt. For centuries, women were dying after childbirth. One of the leading causes of death was puerperal fever, which killed mothers shortly after birth. These women died regardless of their beliefs. Call in the priest. Call in the shaman. Let everyone pray over them and they still died.
Ignaz Semmelweis ordered his doctors to wash their hands. Within weeks, his hospital saw a drastic reduction of puerperal fever. These new mothers might have been atheists, Catholics or evangelicals. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the infection that doctors were spreading or not spreading after cutting up corpses.
Bildad would probably hate Ignaz Semmelweis. As far as Bildad believes, Job and his sons paid for their sins. Job's life will only approve if he listens to Bilad, Bildad the Shuhite, Bildad the schmuck, Bildad the stupid asshole.
Seriously Bildad sucks.
Fuck Bildad.
Next week: Job should punch Bildad in the mouth. Sadly, he doesn't.
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