His roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones.
Job 8:17 stands in that part of the book which sets out the prolonged debate between Job and his three friends concerning his afflictions. It belongs to Bildad's speech, set within the speeches of the friends that accuse Job of wrongdoing and insist his sufferings have come upon him because of sin. Its figure is that of a thriving plant whose roots twist themselves about a heap of stones and whose spreading growth looks toward or reaches into that stony place.
The wider action surrounding it is God disciplining Job and leading him through the fire of affliction, thereby displaying overruling providence and opening the great problems of sin and suffering. The friends frequently uttered principles that were true in themselves yet falsely applied them to Job, for affliction is no proof that the sufferer lies under divine displeasure, although in the final reckoning evil will be punished and good rewarded. In this the book lays bare the abiding human tendency to misjudge fellow sufferers after the same pattern. Whatever is asserted about God and about Job in this chapter is therefore not to be received as authoritative where it clashes with the rest of Scripture, but is to be weighed and tested by inspired teaching.
Job 8:17 stands in that part of the book which sets out the prolonged debate between Job and his three friends concerning his afflictions. It belongs to Bildad's speech, set within the speeches of the friends that accuse Job of wrongdoing and insist his sufferings have come upon him because of sin. Its figure is that of a thriving plant whose roots twist themselves about a heap of stones and whose spreading growth looks toward or reaches into that stony place.
The wider action surrounding it is God disciplining Job and leading him through the fire of affliction, thereby displaying overruling providence and opening the great problems of sin and suffering. The friends frequently uttered principles that were true in themselves yet falsely applied them to Job, for affliction is no proof that the sufferer lies under divine displeasure, although in the final reckoning evil will be punished and good rewarded. In this the book lays bare the abiding human tendency to misjudge fellow sufferers after the same pattern. Whatever is asserted about God and about Job in this chapter is therefore not to be received as authoritative where it clashes with the rest of Scripture, but is to be weighed and tested by inspired teaching.