Job CXXXI

 Job 11:1-6, “Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said: ‘Should not the multitude of words be answered? And should a man full of talk be vindicated? Should your empty talk make men hold their peace? And when you mock, should no one rebuke you? For you have said, ‘my doctrine is pure, and I am clean in your eyes.’ But oh, that God would speak, and open His lips against you, that He would show you the secrets of wisdom! For they would double your prudence. Know therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves.”’

If his other two friends only made insinuations and hinted at the possibility that Job may have sinned and was thus being punished, it seems Zophar had no qualms about coming out and saying it, and in a less genteel manner than Eliphaz and Bildad combined. Zophar’s directness and lack of tact in his approach to Job’s suffering reflect a common theological belief of the time, that suffering is a direct result of sin. This belief is deeply ingrained in Zophar’s worldview and influences his judgment of Job, even though Job was his friend, and he knew Job’s character more than most. He dismissed all the history he had with Job and all the time they spent together based on a flawed belief structure.

Just because you talk a lot, it doesn’t make you innocent. Just because you insist you can think of nothing that you’ve done that would upset God and set him against you, it doesn’t mean you’re vindicated. We’ve all heard what you said. You said your doctrine was pure, and you were clean in our eyes, but if this is the case, then why are you in the condition you’re in? It’s not difficult to imagine wagging fingers, bulging neck veins, and spittle. Lots of spittle.

You can tell by the tonality of his opening salvo that Zophar had been sitting and stewing for some time. He was emotionally bottled up, had been for days, if not weeks, quiet, brooding, thinking of all the things he would say to his friend, and finally, it was his turn. By this time, Zophar had worked himself up into such a lather that he concluded that God’s punishment of Job in the condition he was in was less than what his iniquity deserved. No, I’m not sorry God is punishing you; I’m just surprised He isn’t punishing you more. Kind of harsh for a friend; then again, we’ve all been there.

Have you ever thought someone had wronged you or that something they said was intended as a slight, and the more you ruminated upon it, the bigger the issue became? The initial interaction might have been something so benign and inconsequential that had you not meditated upon it, you would have forgotten within an hour at most, but you dwelt on it, and let it fester, and it grew, and ballooned to the point that it’s all you can do to go up to the person you once called a friend and demand to know why the hated you.

All I said was that a striped tie doesn’t go well with a polka dot shirt! How did you get I hate you from that? What Zophar did was worse still, because Job had leveled no sleight or accusation against him personally, yet Zophar felt compelled to stand in judgment of him, and somehow, in his mind not only defend God, but insist that Job wasn’t being punished enough! The injustice of it all was palpable.

What more could there be? How much worse could it get? Unless an ear, fingers, or toes started sloughing off Job and falling off randomly, there wasn’t a worse for him. Satan had done his absolute worst and visited upon him all the pain and torment he could think of, yet a man Job called a friend sat before him now and insisted that he was getting less than his iniquity deserved.

What iniquity? That is the question none of Job’s friends could answer, a question Job himself asked of God for which he likewise received no answer because there was no iniquity to be revealed or exposed.

All three of Job’s friends were so certain of their conclusions that they chose to believe him a liar, even though they never called him such to his face, while ignoring the absence of any evidence to buoy their assertions. There was no presumption of innocence on their part, nor did they require proof of guilt. They knew what they knew based on the things they’d learned throughout their lives, and the only thing that made sense to them was that Job was guilty of something horrendous.

Some people are so set in their ways and unwilling to course-correct that even when evidence challenging their preconceived notion is evident and plentiful, they continue to justify their position. This becomes dangerous when the issue is a spiritual matter and when the Word of God is clear on the topic. When we ignore Scripture because it contradicts our entrenched beliefs regarding some doctrine or another, what we are doing, in essence, is placing ourselves above God and insisting that we must be right, even if that means He must be wrong.

This danger is a key moral and philosophical insight from the Book of Job, highlighting the importance of humility and openness to God’s truth. Rather than stare in the mirror and repeat some dated mantra Joel Osteen stole from Tony Robbins, perhaps a better use of our time is to stare in the mirror and tell ourselves we don’t know it all until we actually believe it.

Zophar was a traditionalist through and through. Things are as they have always been, they will always be as they are, and nothing will change; therefore, if you are being ground into the dust of the earth, it must be the direct result of sin.

I hear what you’re saying; I just don’t believe it. Moreover, your punishment is less than you deserve, so you should be thankful for that, at least. The old adage that with friends like these, who needs enemies comes to mind because whatever empathy or compassion they may have shown Job when they first arrived to visit him was well and truly gone. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.