Job 11:4

Job has poured out his grief (Job 3), Eliphaz has spoken (Job 4–5), Bildad has spoken (Job 8), and Job has answered each of them. His last reply ends in a direct plea to God to show him why he suffers and a protest of his innocence (Job 10). Zophar now completes the first round of the debate. All three friends hold that suffering is always the sufferer’s own fault. Eliphaz leaned on what had been revealed to him and Bildad on the wisdom of the fathers, while Zophar argues from a stark logic of justice and comes straight to accusation.

His whole speech fills Job 11. These six verses are its opening rebuke. He then praises God’s unsearchable wisdom (Job 11:7–9) and ends by calling Job to repent, with a promise of restoration if he does (Job 11:13–19). The book sets all these human speeches before God’s own answer from the whirlwind (Job 38–41).

The name Tsôwphar means “departing”. He is called Naʻămâthîy, a man from a place whose name matches Naamah, though it is a different place from the town of that name. It is generally placed in Edom or Arabia, which puts Zophar among the men of the east. The great questions of this book are being argued out among Job’s wider circle, well beyond Israel.

“Answered” is ʻânâh, to answer or respond, and the Hebrew opens with wayyaʿan, “and he answered”. The same verb comes back in verse 2, where Zophar asks whether Job’s words should “be answered”. His speech is a reply to what Job has just said, and he hears Job’s words as a challenge that must be met.

“For thou hast said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes.” Zophar puts these words in Job’s mouth as a summary of everything Job has said. “Doctrine” is leqach, teaching or instruction, a word that comes from the verb to take or receive. Here it means Job’s argument, his whole stand on his innocence and his suffering. “Pure” is zak, clear, clean or pure, and “clean” is bar, pure or clean. Set side by side, they make the claim as strong as it can be. The phrase “in thine eyes” turns from Job’s view of himself to God’s view of him, and that is the heart of the charge: Zophar hears Job saying he can stand before God without fault.

“But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee.” The words “oh that” render a Hebrew phrase, mi yitten, that voices a strong wish. “Speak” is dâbar, to speak, tell or mention (Strong’s notes a rare sense, to subdue). “Open” is pâthach, to open wide or to loosen, and “lips” is sâphâh, the same word that stood behind “talk” in verse 2. Zophar has just called Job “a man of lips”. Now he wishes that God would open his own lips, sure that one word from God would settle the matter. And he says which way that word should go: “against thee”. He wants God to act as Job’s accuser, to expose Job’s hidden sin and to prove the friends right.

This is a bold thing to want. Zophar speaks as if he already knows what God would say. God did break his silence, from the whirlwind (Job 38:1–3), and the speech that followed was something Zophar never imagined. God set his own wisdom and the vastness of his creation before Job, humbling him and exposing how little any of the men understood. Then he turned to the friends and said they had spoken wrongly of him (Job 42:7–9). The LORD says through Isaiah that his thoughts and ways are as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth (Isaiah 55:8–9).

When God speaks, he does sometimes pronounce judgment, as he did after the fall (Genesis 3:17–19). He also speaks to make himself known, to give his promises, his law and his salvation, and in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2).

“And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is!” “Secrets” is taʻălummâh, something hidden or concealed. “Double” is kephel, twofold. Zophar means that God’s wisdom has far more to it than anything a man can see, and he implies that God knows far more about Job’s sin than Job admits. He gives a true picture of God’s wisdom, and Paul praises the same depth: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33–36).

Then comes the verdict: “Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.” The words “less” and “deserveth” were supplied by the translators to complete the sense. The KJV renders the verb nâshâh “exacteth”, and on that rendering Zophar pictures God as a creditor who holds Job to account for a debt and mercifully collects less than is owed. In Zophar’s eyes, Job should be grateful that his suffering is so light. It is a crushing thing to say to a man who has lost his children, his wealth and his health. And it is also the plainest statement in the friends’ speeches of the belief the whole book answers, that suffering is measured out exactly to fit a person’s sin.

Zophar wished that God would open his lips against a sufferer. God has spoken his fullest word in the Word made flesh (John 1:1–14), and he sent his Son into the world so that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). For those who are in Christ Jesus, the sentence of condemnation is lifted (Romans 8:1). Job himself longed for a mediator to stand between him and God (Job 9:33) and for a Redeemer (Job 19:25), and in Christ that longing is met.

Zophar asked whether a man full of talk could be justified. Paul answers that by the deeds of the law no flesh is justified in God’s sight (Romans 3:20), and that we are justified by faith (Romans 3:28), with a righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ (Philippians 3:9). Christ is made unto us righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). The only way to be clean in God’s eyes, as Zophar heard Job claim to be, is through the one who was tempted in all points like us, “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). He made us clean through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost (Titus 3:5), and his blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

Zophar wanted Job shamed and silenced for lies he never told. Jesus, wholly innocent, faced false witnesses (Matthew 26:59–60), was mocked by soldiers with a purple robe and a crown of thorns (Mark 15:17), and held his peace like a lamb before its shearers (Isaiah 53:7). He endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4–5), and God made him to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God shows his love in this, that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).

Zophar told Job that God exacted less than his iniquity deserved. At the cross God laid on his Son the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:5–6), the whole debt and more than a part of it, so that those who believe receive pardon in full. The secrets of wisdom Zophar spoke about are opened in Christ, who is himself the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24).

Zophar’s opening is a sober picture of how true things about God can be spoken in a way God rejects. Every one of his claims about God’s wisdom and justice can be found elsewhere in Scripture, yet he spoke them to the wrong man, about the wrong cause, and without hearing him out. Proverbs warns of the man who is wise in his own eyes (Proverbs 26:12), and Job’s own verdict on his friends’ counsel comes two chapters later (Job 13:4).

What this passage gives us above all is a view of God that is larger than Zophar’s. God’s wisdom really is deeper than we can measure (Romans 11:33–36), and that depth is a reason for humility when we stand beside someone in pain. The God whom Zophar wanted to see condemn has spoken in his Son, and the word he speaks there is grace. James puts the lesson of Zophar’s speech in one line: be swift to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19).