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Bildad compares the hope of the impious to a spider's web, or rather, recalling sayings of antiquity, he quotes an old proverb to that effect. Let us consider the wisdom of this ancient saying by noting characteristics of the spider's web.

I. IT IS QUICKLY WOVEN. It is one of the most rapidly made fabrics in nature. It puts Jonah's gourd to the shame. Some men are very hasty in forming foolish hopes. With them the wish is father to the thought. They jump to conclusions that are favourable to themselves. But the sanguine temperament is no guarantee for permanent security. Because we believe readily, we do not believe the more safely.

II. IT IS DELICATE AND BEAUTIFUL TO LOOK AT. We cannot but admire the spider's web on a bright September morning, when it. is spangled with dewdrops. Its very delicacy of structure adds to the beauty of it. There is nothing coarse about it. Some people have a religion that is refined and delicate and beautiful. They despise the vulgar ideas of other people. Their spider's web is much more suitable to their superfine culture than the coarse hemp ropes of the religion of less cultivated people.

III. IT IS USEFUL FOR ITS NATURAL END. We have no right to complain that the spider's web does not sustain our weight when we lean upon it. It was not spun for such a purpose. But yet it serves its own proper end. It is an excellent ladder for its maker, and a perfect trap for his victims. Some of those grounds of hope to which foolish people trust are not utterly false and useless. For example, aestheticism taken for a religion is as a spider's web. Yet it is useful as a form of culture. Intellectualism is like another spider's web. While the superfine thinker is spinning his fanciful threads of thought, he is doing little for the business of life. Yet what he does may be good and true in itself, if only he would keep it in its right place.

IV. IT IS EXCESSIVELY FRAGILE. It is just the type of fragility. Therefore all its good points are useless when a man thinks of trusting his weight to it. You but mock the drowning man if you toss him the spider's web. He must grasp a substantial rope if he is to be saved. Now, Bildad rightly compares the hope of the impious to this web. It is fragile in the extreme.

1. It has no substance The man trusts

(1) to his own wisdom, which is folly in the eyes of God;

(2) to his goodness, which under God's searching glance is full of sin;

(3) to his prosperity, which cannot endure when the favour of God is withdrawn;

(4) to God's goodness, which indeed is a rock of refuge, only it is out of the reach of the impious, who only clutch at a shadow of it in their own fancy.

2. It is heavily tried. Here is a question of life and death. A man has to seek a security for his own soul and his eternal interests. The spider's web may stand slight tests, but not the strain those awful requirements put upon it. AEsthetics, intellectualism, and all other human ideas fail here. We want a strong means of deliverance, the gospel shows us that this is to be had in Christ for those who repent and trust him. - W.F.A.

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KJV: Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's web.

WEB: Whose confidence shall break apart, Whose trust is a spider's web.