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Job 18
1Then Bildad the Shuhite answered,
2“How long will you hunt for words? Consider, and afterwards we will speak.
3Why are we counted as animals, which have become unclean in your sight?
4You who tear yourself in your anger, will the earth be forsaken for you? Or will the rock be removed out of its place?
5“Yes, the light of the wicked will be put out. The spark of his fire won’t shine.
6The light will be dark in his tent. His lamp above him will be put out.
7The steps of his strength will be shortened. His own counsel will cast him down.
8For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he wanders into its mesh.
9A snare will take him by the heel. A trap will catch him.
10A noose is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him on the path.
11Terrors will make him afraid on every side, and will chase him at his heels.
12His strength will be famished. Calamity will be ready at his side.
13The members of his body will be devoured. The firstborn of death will devour his members.
14He will be rooted out of the security of his tent. He will be brought to the of terrors.
15There will dwell in his tent that which is none of his. Sulfur will be scattered on his habitation.
16His roots will be dried up beneath. His branch will be cut off above.
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.”
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Questions this passage answers
Why does God allow suffering?
Scripture never gives one tidy reason for all suffering. It says that pain entered a good world through sin, that God is neither its author nor its prisoner, that he uses it without approving of it, and that he entered it himself in Christ rather than explaining it from a distance. The Bible answers the question with a person before it answers it with an argument.
Why does God seem silent?
God's apparent silence is felt by some of the most faithful people in Scripture, not only by the weak in faith. David, Job and Habakkuk all cried out into what felt like empty air. Scripture never rebukes them for asking. It records their words as prayer, answers them in its own time, and teaches that God's silence is never his absence.