Job 18: God Sets Traps for the Wicked

“For [the wicked] is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks into a snare… Terrors frighten him on every side and drive him to his feet.” — Job 18:8, 11

The Warped Theology of the Prosperity Gospel

Bildad speaks again, and with sharper venom than before. He opens with scorn: “How long till you put an end to words? Gain understanding, and afterward we will speak” (v. 2). There’s no invitation to conversation and no sympathy for Job’s suffering. Bildad, like Eliphaz before him, is no longer trying to correct a friend; he is prosecuting a perceived enemy.

“Why are we counted as beasts and regarded as stupid in your sight?” (v. 3). Bildad’s ego is wounded. Job has exposed the failure of their theology, and rather than reconsider, Bildad retaliates. The accusation is familiar: when false comforters are corrected, they become critics. When the theology of glory is challenged by lived suffering, it often hardens into dogma instead of bending into compassion.

Bildad then unleashes a torrent of images describing the fate of the wicked for the rest of his dialogue—a catalog of terror and ruin. And although he never names Job directly, the implication is clear: this is you. The rhetorical move is brutal. Bildad pretends to speak generally about “the wicked,” but every detail is tailored to Job’s situation, twisting the knife beneath religious language.

This is the essence of the prosperity gospel: it interprets all events through a rigid moral calculus. If you suffer, you must have sinned and therefore angered God in some way. If you’re blessed, you must be righteous and done something to earn God’s favor. There’s no room for mystery, testing, or redemptive pain. Such theology cannot withstand the cross, much less martyrdom and human suffering. It simplifies God to a formula and treats life as a ledger.

This false gospel is not only theologically myopic and erroneous—it is pastorally devastating. It leaves no room for the innocent sufferer. It offers no grace to the grieving and no mercy to the afflicted. In the name of defending God’s justice, it ends up defacing God’s heart. Bildad’s words reveal what happens when piety forgets humility: it builds a courtroom where every sufferer stands guilty and the only “gospel” left is condemnation.

A God Who Hunts

The portrait Bildad paints is grotesque: “The light of the wicked indeed goes out, and the flame of his fire does not shine… His strength is starved, and destruction is ready at his side” (vv. 5, 12). This is not simply a description of divine judgement—it’s a declaration that Job’s suffering proves he’s among the damned. The God Bildad invokes is not a shepherd or a Father—He’s a hunter, a trapper, a judge who hides snares in the shadows and delights to see the guilty fall into them.

“For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks into a snare… Terrors frighten him on every side and drive him to his feet” (vv. 8, 11). These words echo Job’s own lament in earlier chapters. But Bildad repurposes Job’s metaphors to accuse him: your suffering is your own fault. God does not afflict the righteous; therefore, you must be wicked.

His theology of glory weaponizes providence. It places human logic over divine mystery. It builds its case with the language of Scripture but voids it of mercy. It does not consider the possibility of righteous suffering, redemptive affliction, or a silent but listening God. It demands immediate justice, and finds comfort only when someone else is declared guilty.

We see here the cruelty of the prosperity gospel that uses poetic truth without pastoral restraint. Bildad borrows images of the hunted and the trapped not to empathize but to accuse. He knows Job feels ensnared, yet he turns that feeling into a weapon. In his hands, the language of lament becomes a sword to cut down the hurting instead of defending them. He proclaims a God who stalks rather than saves, who pursues not in mercy but in retribution.

Such a God is terrifying—and false. It’s one thing to acknowledge divine justice; it’s another to turn God into a predator. Scripture does speak of God’s wrath against evil, but always in concert with His mercy toward the contrite, even that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11). Bildad ignores that balance. He casts God in the image of human retribution. And in doing so, he proclaims not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but a false god of fear, control, and unrelenting condemnation. This god is not the God Job cries out to—and he is not the God who will speak from the whirlwind (38:1).

The Erasure of the Sufferer

Bildad continues, “He is driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. He has neither son nor posterity among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings” (vv. 18-19). This is a theological obliteration of Job’s legacy. To have no name, no children, no memory is not just social shame; in the ancient world, it is a cursed death.

Here, Bildad speaks not only about Job’s current condition but also his eternal fate. His implication is ruthlessly clear: God has not only ruined your life; He has rejected your soul. This is a false gospel of despair. And tragically, it is preached far too often—whenever someone’s grief is interpreted as a sign of divine rejection, or their affliction becomes a reason to abandon them.

What Bildad offers is not comfort but cosmic annihilation. Job has already lost his health, children, livelihood, and dignity. Now Bildad seeks to strip him of hope and belonging. His theology, though wrapped in biblical language, commits pastoral murder. It silences lament, denies mystery, and rejects grace.

Finally, the chapter ends with a chilling finality: “Surely, such are the dwellings of the wicked, and this is the place of him who does not know God” (v. 21). With these words, Bildad places Job outside the covenant. He does not even accuse Job of specific sins anymore—he simply declares Job “does not know God.”

This is religious abuse—to look upon the face of a believer in agony and tell them they’re damned because they don’t have enough faith in God. It is to take the name of God in vain—not through profanity, but through pious presumption that leads to deception, which Luther cautioned us against: “We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks” (SC I, The Second Commandment). Bildad describes God as the one who sets traps for the wicked, but it is Bildad who has set a trap for the innocent—not just for Job’s arguments, but also for his soul. Worse, he has done it in the name of God.

Pastors and Christians must beware this temptation. The theology of glory is a seductive idol for all of us, especially when pain makes us uncomfortable. But theology without compassion is not wisdom—it is self-righteousness. True theology holds tension: justice and mercy, Law and Gospel, God hidden and present, silence and speech. It does not rush to accuse; it kneels to listen.

God Does Not Trap the Righteous

Bildad has declared his verdict. He’s given Job no way out. In his framework, there’s no space for mystery, no path for repentance, and no hope for the afflicted. Only a trap. But the God of Job—the One who will speak from the whirlwind and vindicate His suffering servant—is not the God of the trap. He’s the God of mercy, who allows lament, receives the cries of the broken, and justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5). He’s not waiting to ensnare, but to save.

Bildad cannot see this—but Job, though buried in sorrow, still believes it. And from that faith, even if buried beneath despair and the ashes of his dead skin, hope will one day rise.