Job 11:8

Zophar the Naamathite speaks after Eliphaz (Job 4–5) and Bildad (Job 8), and his speech closes the first round of the friends’ speeches. It is the bluntest of the three. He opens by calling Job a man of many words (Job 11:2), and just before this passage he tells him, “God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” (Job 11:6). Job has just poured out his longing to bring his case before God and his protest that he is blameless (Job 9–10). In that same speech Job had already owned that God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Zophar answers him with these verses, the heart of the whole speech in Job 11.

Like the other friends, Zophar holds that suffering always follows sin and prosperity always follows righteousness, so Job’s great trouble must mean great sin, even sin that nobody can see. He speaks of the mystery of God in order to silence Job and press him to confess. We know from the opening of the book that Job is righteous and that his suffering is a test. In the end the LORD rebukes the three friends (Job 42:7), so their speeches are read with care.

People ask whether Zophar’s words in these verses are true. What he says about God is true, and Scripture confirms it again and again, as the sections below show. His fault is in the use he makes of it, for he turns God’s greatness into a weapon against a suffering man. Job answers him in Job 12, agreeing about God’s power while disputing what the friends conclude from it about his suffering.

“Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” Both questions expect the answer no, and the second line repeats and strengthens the first. The word for searching, chêqer, means examination or searching out, the kind of effort that tries to get to the bottom of something. “Find out” is the same verb in both lines, mâtsâʼ, which means to find, reach or attain. Zophar asks whether a person can reach God by inquiry, however diligent and thorough it is.

In the second line God is called Shadday, “the Almighty”, an ancient title for him. Its exact meaning is uncertain, and “the All-Sufficient One” is one possible sense. Set here, the name reminds Job who it is he would search out. The last word, taklîyth, translated “unto perfection”, means completion, and so the farthest limit or end of a thing. Zophar is asking whether anyone can reach the end of God, the point where there is nothing more about him to be learned. God’s being, wisdom and ways stretch past every limit our minds can reach.

The rest of Scripture says the same. The LORD says that his thoughts and ways are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:8–9). A psalm says that his greatness is unsearchable (Psalm 145:3), and Paul breaks into praise at the depth of God’s wisdom and knowledge, whose ways are “past finding out” (Romans 11:33–36). The book of Job bears this out when the LORD answers Job from the whirlwind (Job 38–41) and shows him wisdom and power far beyond any man’s, and Job, humbled, confesses God’s power and his own ignorance (Job 42:1–6).

“It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” The “it” is the perfection of the Almighty just named, the full extent of who God is and of his wisdom. Heaven, shâmayim, is the sky and the heavens above, the place spoken of as God’s dwelling, and so the greatest height there is. Hell, shᵉʼôwl, is the world of the dead, the grave pictured as a place beneath the earth. In the Old Testament it generally means the grave or the realm of the dead, and here it stands for the lowest and most hidden depth of all. God’s greatness reaches higher than the one and deeper than the other.

Each picture is followed by a short question. Faced with a height like that, what can a person do? He has no way to climb to it, change it or stand against it. Faced with a depth like that, what can he know? The verb is yâdaʻ, to know, a word with a wide range that takes in learning by seeing, experience and understanding. The same verb returns in verse 11, where God “knoweth vain men”. The man who can know so little of God stands before a God who knows him through and through.

Verse 9 adds the other two directions: “The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” The measure, mad, is the extent or size of a thing, its height or length. The earth, ʼerets, is the whole land, the world at large, the greatest length a person could picture. Broader, râchâb, means wide or roomy in every direction. The sea, yâm, is the sea or any large body of water. Put together with verse 8, height and depth, length and breadth, the four directions say that God is beyond our measuring in every way we could try to measure him.

“If he cut off, and shut up, or gather together, then who can hinder him?” The first verb, châlaph, is a word of movement and change. It means to pass on, pass through, pass away or change, and the KJV renders it “cut off” here. The clause may mean God cutting off a life, a prosperity or a family line. The second, çâgar, means to shut, to shut in or to deliver up, and it can speak of confining a person or closing in his circumstances. The third, qâhal, means to call together or assemble, perhaps gathering people for judgment. So God ends, confines and gathers, and his power builds up as well as tears down. The “if” carries no doubt. It sets up the condition for the question that follows.

The verb behind “hinder”, shûwb, means to turn back or return, so the question asks who can turn God back from what he is doing. The expected answer is that no one can, whether man, nation or any power in heaven or earth. A psalm says that our God is in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3). Through Isaiah the LORD says that when he works, none can reverse it (Isaiah 43:13), and that when he has purposed a thing, none can annul it (Isaiah 14:27). Nebuchadnezzar confesses that none can stay God’s hand (Daniel 4:35), and Paul asks who we are to answer back to God (Romans 9:19–20).

God’s power is joined to his perfect wisdom and justice, even where his ways are hidden from us. That is why it brings comfort: his good purposes will stand whatever opposes them.

“For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it?” Here the God who cannot be searched out is the one who searches. “Vain men” joins two words. shâvᵉʼ speaks of evil as ruin, and morally of guile, falsehood and emptiness, and math is a grown man, used only in the plural. Together they mean men of falsehood or emptiness, whose outward claims are hollow before God. He knows them as they are, past every appearance and excuse.

He also sees, râʼâh, their wickedness, ʼâven. That word carries a sense of nothingness and comes to mean trouble, mischief and wrongdoing that does harm to the doer and to others. Then comes the question, “will he not then consider it?”, which expects the answer yes. To consider, bîyn, is to understand or discern, to tell one thing from another. God takes in what he sees and weighs it, and his judgment follows from it.

This is true. God knows us before a word is on our tongue (Psalm 139:1–4), and nothing is hidden from his sight (Hebrews 4:13). The heart is deceitful, and the LORD searches it and gives to each according to his ways (Jeremiah 17:9–10). God will render to every man according to his deeds (Romans 2:6), and the dead are judged out of the books (Revelation 20:12). Zophar’s point is that God has seen Job’s hidden sin and is dealing with it. There is irony in that, because we know that God has looked at Job and called him righteous. The same truth that Zophar uses to accuse also comforts, since no injustice and no hidden suffering escapes God’s notice.

“For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” Verses 11 and 12 share the English word “vain”, but the Hebrew words differ. Here “vain” is nâbab, a root meaning to pierce, and so to be hollow, and figuratively foolish. The man is ʼîysh, a man as an individual. A hollow man, empty of understanding, still “would be wise”. He wants wisdom or claims to have it.

The second “man” is ʼâdâm, a human being, mankind as a whole. The wild ass, pereʼ, is the onager, named for running wild. Its colt, ʻayir, is a young ass, the kind that has to be broken to carry a load. The KJV supplies the word “like” to make the comparison clear. A wild ass was hard to tame and resisted training, so a wild ass’s colt is a picture of a creature untamed from birth, undisciplined and unwilling to be taught. Zophar says that this is how people come into the world, and he means Job: a man who argues with God shows his own folly.

The picture is an overstatement meant to humble Job, and yet the truth beneath it runs through Scripture. We need God to make us wise. Wisdom begins in reverence for the LORD (Proverbs 9:10), the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God (1 Corinthians 3:19), and there is none righteous and none that understands (Romans 3:10–12). The irony is that Zophar speaks with complete certainty, as though he knew the mind of God and the reason for Job’s suffering. His rigid account of God’s justice is itself the kind of vain wisdom he condemns, and it is the friends whom the LORD rebukes in the end.

The unsearchable God of these verses is beyond our full understanding, and yet he can be known personally, because he has chosen to make himself known. He shows his glory in creation (Psalm 19:1–4), he speaks in his written Word, and he shows himself most fully in Jesus Christ. “No man hath seen God at any time,” John writes, but “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). The Almighty whom no one can find out by searching came to us as Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” and that whoever knows him knows the Father (John 14:6–7). He says too that no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals him (Matthew 11:27). He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). Our knowledge of God is partial, and it is true, enough for salvation and for a living relationship of faith and worship.

Zophar spoke truly about God and wrongly about Job, and these verses show what his true words give us. God is greater than every height and depth we can name. He acts and none turns him back, and he sees every hidden wrong. That greatness calls for awe, and it is also a place of rest, for the One who governs all things does so with a wisdom that has no end. When suffering comes with no explanation, as it did for Job, the God of these verses still holds it. He has not left us to search him out alone. He has come near in his Son, and in him the unsearchable God is known and trusted, and the untamed heart is made new.