At the heart of Job’s disagreement with his friends is that they believe man has a right to expect certain things from God. God punishes evil and rewards the righteous. This is a well-accepted and obvious truth, and, once embraced and followed, man has a right to expect God to reward him for doing good. While this is true on the face, it isn’t always so in what occurs in the land of the living. The innocent do suffer, while the wicked, indeed, prosper. In fact, this is so often true that it is frequently depressing and problematic for those who seek to establish the righteousness of God in a wicked world. Job argues here that God is so great that he is unfathomable to man. The Lord’s ways are not always readily understood and are often unattainable for man’s wisdom to uncover, unless God condescends to make himself known to a greater degree. Nevertheless, God isn’t obligated to reveal what he does to mankind. Such things may come by grace, but not through compulsion on God’s part. God is God, after all, and we are not (cp. Job 9:32)!
Job has begun his first reply to Bildad, agreeing that God would never pervert judgment or justice. However, he added that mankind isn’t just before God, so why would a just God feel compelled to agree with and establish the inaccurate judgments of mankind (Job 9:1-2)? Job then skips over Bildad’s personal attack on Job’s integrity and his call for Job to repent (Job 8:4-7) and addresses the basis of Bildad’s argument that the antediluvian generation was wiser than the then present (Job’s) generation. In other words, Bildad believes the antediluvian generation was wiser, simply because they lived so much longer than anyone in Job’s and the friends’ own time (Job 8:8-10). However, if Job’s argument that mankind is thoroughly unjust before God (Job 9:2) is logical and true, Bildad’s argument of a wiser generation, prior to the one in which Job lived, is rendered moot, because that generation was also unjust and, therefore, no wiser, than those who lived shorter lives in the days of Job and the friends!
After all, it was the men of the antediluvian age who first began to contend with God (Job 9:3). They rebelled (Genesis 3) and continued in their rebellion until violence filled the earth (Genesis 6). Thus, manifesting the fact that they were, indeed, unwise, because they believed, if they partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they would be wise enough to master its fruit (cp. Genesis 3:6-7). Not only were they wrong (unwise) on that account, but they believed they could be lords over the creation of God (Genesis 1:26), while at the same time contending with the Lord God, himself, who was much wiser and mightier than they (Job 9:4).
God is able to change the course of nature (Job 9:5-7), moving mountains or removing them entirely. He is able to shake the earth out of its place (orbit) and even cause the sun and the stars to cease shinning upon the earth. In point of fact, the Lord actually did all these things, when he brought the great flood upon the earth during the days of Noah (Genesis 6 to 8). Not only so, but his wisdom and power has kept all these things in their present courses day after day (cp. Hebrews 1:2-3). Such is the greatness of our God.
Moreover, it was God who originally spread out the heavens, placing the constellations like the Bear, Orion and Pleiades in their proper places (Job 9:8-9). Not only was he able to do such magnificent things, but he is presently keeping the heavens spread out, thus, preventing them from returning to their original chaotic mass (Genesis 1:2).
Nevertheless, although God does such marvelous things in the presence of mankind, it is all accomplished without God being observed by man! In other words, and to Eliphaz’s point (Job 5:9), while the magnificent and innumerable works of God aren’t hidden, but are performed in man’s presence, no one is able to observe the Lord, while he is doing such amazing things (Job 9:10-11).
In a context such as this, if so great a God, whose labors are noticed by mankind, while he who performs them remains undetected, and if such a great Being would take away something: health, wealth, strength etc., who would be able to prevent him from doing so or demand of him an explanation for what he has done (Job 9:12)? Could any man do such a thing, knowing that no one is just before such a God (cp. Job 9:2)?
Finally, we need to keep in mind that the antediluvian age declared war upon this great God, in that they expelled him from their lives (Genesis 3; cp. Romans 1:28)! Why, then, should we expect God to restrain his wrath (Job 9:13)? What rules can we expect to be observed in war? Who among us has the right to demand that God act differently toward him? If all men are unjust before God (Job 9:2), then it matters little that one is less evil than his neighbor. In other words, God crushes the righteous, so called, who, through their own unrighteous deeds, have helped the proud contenders with God (Job 9:13).
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