Scripture Daily

Context No. 1669 of 4322 · Job

Context · Reflection

Job 11:1-20: in context

1Then Zophar, the Naamathite, answered, 2“Shouldn’t the multitude of words be answered? Should a man full of talk be justified? 3Should your boastings make men hold their peace? When you mock, will no man make you ashamed? 4For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure. I am clean in your eyes.’ 5But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against you, 6that he would show you the secrets of wisdom! For true wisdom has two sides. Know therefore that God exacts of you less than your iniquity deserves. 7“Can you fathom the mystery of God? Or can you probe the limits of the Almighty? 8They are high as heaven. What can you do? They are deeper than Sheol. What can you know? 9Its measure is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. 10If he passes by, or confines, or convenes a court, then who can oppose him? 11For he knows false men. He sees iniquity also, even though he doesn’t consider it. 12An empty-headed man becomes wise when a man is born as a wild donkey’s colt. 13“If you set your heart aright, stretch out your hands toward him. 14If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away. Don’t let unrighteousness dwell in your tents. 15Surely then you will lift up your face without spot. Yes, you will be steadfast, and will not fear, 16for you will forget your misery. You will remember it like waters that have passed away. 17Life will be clearer than the noonday. Though there is darkness, it will be as the morning. 18You will be secure, because there is hope. Yes, you will search, and will take your rest in safety. 19Also you will lie down, and no one will make you afraid. Yes, many will court your favor. 20But the eyes of the wicked will fail. They will have no way to flee. Their hope will be the giving up of the spirit.”

Zophar, the third of Job's friends, breaks in, and he spares Job nothing. He rebukes Job for his flood of words and his claim to be pure, and wishes God would speak and expose him, for, Zophar says, God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves. Then he turns to the greatness of God: can you fathom the mystery of God? It is higher than heaven, deeper than Sheol, longer than the earth. And he ends with the usual formula: put away your sin, and you will be secure and unafraid.

There is a strange thing in Zophar's speech. Much of what he says about God is true: God's greatness is beyond our fathoming, higher than heaven and deeper than the grave; we cannot probe the limits of the Almighty. That is sound and humbling doctrine. But Zophar uses these true words in a false and cruel way. Having declared that God is unsearchable, that we cannot fathom his ways, he then turns around and confidently pronounces exactly why Job is suffering: because he deserves it, because his guilt is even greater than his pain. He wields the mystery of God as a club against a suffering man, certain he has the case figured out. And that is the flaw. If God is truly unsearchable, higher than heaven and deeper than Sheol, then Zophar is in no position to declare with such confidence that Job's suffering is the measured payment for his sin. His own words about God's mystery should have made him slower to diagnose. There is a warning here for us. It is possible to hold true beliefs about God, his greatness, his justice, his unsearchable ways, and yet to misuse them, turning them into confident verdicts on why someone else is suffering, adding to their pain a tidy explanation we are in no position to give. The very greatness of God that Zophar rightly names should teach us humility before the suffering of others, not certainty about its causes. If we cannot fathom God, we should be slow to speak for him about why this person bears this pain. Better to sit with the sufferer than to pronounce, as Zophar did, a true doctrine cruelly misapplied.

When someone is suffering, am I tempted, like Zophar, to explain confidently why, wielding true things about God as verdicts on their pain, or does the unsearchable greatness of God, higher than heaven and deeper than Sheol, teach me humility, to be slow to diagnose what I cannot fathom and readier to sit with them than to pronounce?

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