Context No. 907 of 4322 · Job
Context · Reflection
Job 20:17-29: in context
17He will not look at the rivers, the flowing streams of honey and butter. 18He will restore that for which he labored, and will not swallow it down. He will not rejoice according to the substance that he has gotten. 19For he has oppressed and forsaken the poor. He has violently taken away a house, and he will not build it up. 20“Because he knew no quietness within him, he will not save anything of that in which he delights. 21There was nothing left that he didn’t devour, therefore his prosperity will not endure. 22In the fullness of his sufficiency, distress will overtake him. The hand of everyone who is in misery will come on him. 23When he is about to fill his belly, God will cast the fierceness of his wrath on him. It will rain on him while he is eating. 24He will flee from the iron weapon. The bronze arrow will strike him through. 25He draws it out, and it comes out of his body. Yes, the glittering point comes out of his liver. Terrors are on him. 26All darkness is laid up for his treasures. An unfanned fire will devour him. It will consume that which is left in his tent. 27The heavens will reveal his iniquity. The earth will rise up against him. 28The increase of his house will depart. They will rush away in the day of his wrath. 29This is the portion of a wicked man from God, the heritage appointed to him by God.”
This is Zophar, one of Job's three friends, in full flow. He is describing, with grim relish, the fate of the wicked man: he will not enjoy the streams of honey he stole, he will vomit up the riches he swallowed, an arrow will pierce him, terrors will find him, fire will consume what is left in his tent, heaven and earth will testify against him. This, Zophar concludes, is the portion God appoints for the wicked.
The hard thing about Zophar is that much of what he says is true in general and cruel in this particular case. It is often true that ill-gotten gain does not satisfy, that the oppressor who devoured the poor loses what he seized. The Bible says as much elsewhere. But Zophar is not speaking in general; he is aiming this portrait of the doomed wicked man straight at Job, a suffering man he has decided must be secretly guilty, because his theology has no room for an innocent person to suffer this much. So he takes a real principle and turns it into a weapon, using the sound doctrine that the wicked come to ruin to explain a friend's agony as deserved punishment. The book of Job exists partly to demolish exactly this move. God will later say Zophar and his companions have not spoken rightly about him. True statements, fired as accusations at a hurting person you have already judged, become false and cruel, and God takes the side of the one they wounded.
Have I ever used a true principle as a weapon to explain away someone's suffering as deserved, rather than simply sitting with them in it?