Context No. 3293 of 4322 · Job
Context · Reflection
Job 18:17-21: in context
17His memory will perish from the earth. He will have no name in the street. 18He will be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. 19He will have neither son nor grandson among his people, nor any remaining where he lived. 20Those who come after will be astonished at his day, as those who went before were frightened. 21Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous. This is the place of him who doesn’t know God.”
Bildad paints a grim portrait of the fate of the wicked: his memory perishes from the earth, he has no name in the street, he is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world, leaving no son and no survivor. And he ends, surely such is the place of him who does not know God.
Bildad's picture is not simply wrong; there is real truth in the emptiness of a life lived apart from God. His error, as the book will make clear, is aiming it at Job, as if suffering proved wickedness. But we can take the sober truth apart from the false accusation. To live and die without knowing God is indeed a kind of darkness, a name that fades, a life that leaves no lasting root. The tragedy Bildad describes is genuine, though he points it at the wrong man; a life that does not know God, however secure it looks now, has no enduring home.
Am I building my life on knowing God, whose light endures, rather than on what will fade into darkness and leave no lasting root?