Job 13:10

Zophar has just finished his first speech (Job 11), and Job’s long answer runs through Job 12–14. The book is set in the land of Uz among the men of the east, probably outside Israel, east of Edom or in northern Arabia, and likely in the time of the patriarchs. At the start of chapter 13 Job tells the friends that he knows what they know. He calls them “forgers of lies” and “physicians of no value” (Job 13:4), and he wishes they would keep quiet: “O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom” (Job 13:5). What he longs for is to bring his case to God: “Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God” (Job 13:3). A little later he says, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). Before he turns to God, he asks his friends for one thing, a fair hearing.

“Hear now my reasoning” opens with shâmaʻ, the ordinary word for hearing, which also means to listen with attention, to give ear and to regard what is said. In Hebrew the command is shim‘û-nā, an urgent “hear now”. His “reasoning” is tôwkêchâh, a word for an argument, a correction or a rebuke. It is used of people as well as of God, and here it names the case Job has thought through and wants to set before them. The second line says the same thing again with more force. “Hearken” (haqšîḇû) is a stronger verb than “hear” and asks for close, deliberate attention, and “the pleadings of my lips” (rîḇōṯ śəp̄āṯāy) uses rîyb, a contest or dispute. With these two words Job speaks like a man arguing a case. Among the men of the east, disputes were argued out before elders or a judge, and friends and elders were expected to listen and discern the truth of a matter. Job’s friends have made themselves his judges, and he asks them at least to hear him out.

God is “a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (Deuteronomy 32:4), and “Thy word is true from the beginning” (Psalm 119:160). A lie told on his behalf dishonours the very God it claims to defend, and that is the heart of Job’s question in verse 7: “Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?” The friends were defending God’s justice. To do it they accused an innocent man of hidden sins, and Job asks whether God is honoured by that.

The verb dâbar, to speak, to mention or to tell, stands behind both “speak” and “talk”, so Job asks the same thing twice about their speech. “Wickedly” is ʻevel, from ʻaval, “to distort (morally)”, and it means wrong, injustice or iniquity in general terms. “Deceitfully” is rᵉmîyâh, deceit, treachery or fraud. Twice Job says they do this “for God”, on his behalf. Their speech was unjust because it condemned an innocent man, and it was deceitful because it bent the facts of Job’s life to fit a conclusion they had already reached.

There is a sad irony here. In their zeal to defend God’s justice, the friends committed injustice themselves, and in claiming to honour God they made him out to be a God who needs falsehood to keep his name. Paul answers the same error when he rejects the slander that his gospel says, “Let us do evil, that good may come”, and adds, “whose damnation is just” (Romans 3:7–8). A lie stays a lie whatever good it is meant to serve. Scripture is plain about how God regards it: “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22), and “Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing” (Psalm 5:6). God’s own character is his defence, and what he asks of those who speak about him is honesty. That holds wherever we speak of him, at the bedside of a sufferer, in teaching, or in defending the faith.

“Will ye accept his person?” uses a Hebrew idiom for favouritism. The verb is nâsâʼ, to lift, carry or bear, and “person” is pânîym, the face, a word plural in form and always used as a singular, which can also mean someone’s presence. To accept a person is literally to lift up their face. In a court or a dispute it meant showing favour to one party for who they are, their status or influence, and letting that decide the matter in place of the truth.

God’s law forbids it. “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great” (Deuteronomy 1:17), and “thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour” (Leviticus 19:15). Wisdom says the same: “It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment” (Proverbs 24:23). James carries it into the church, warning believers against holding “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons” (James 2:1–4). Behind all of these stands God himself, “a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward” (Deuteronomy 10:17).

Job’s charge is startling, because the “his” in “his person” is God. The friends are showing God the favour a corrupt judge shows a powerful party, deciding for God’s side before they have heard the case and condemning Job to keep that side in the right. They want to be seen on God’s side, and to get there they have set aside the truth about the man in front of them, as if they could win God’s favour by condemning his servant.

The second question, “will ye contend for God?”, uses the verb rîyb, which means to quarrel, contend or accuse, and also to plead another’s cause, the sense it has here. It has the same form as the noun Job used for his own “pleadings” in verse 6. Job pleads his own case, and the friends have made themselves God’s advocates. Their wish to uphold God’s righteousness was right in itself. Their error lay in claiming to know God’s mind perfectly and in condemning Job on the strength of that claim, with no attempt to understand him or to admit how much of God’s ways was hidden from them. When God at last speaks from the whirlwind in Job 38–41, he shows how far his ways are above anything they had grasped.

“Is it good that he should search you out?” asks whether it would go well for them if God examined them. ṭôwb means to be good, right, pleasing or well, and the question expects them to see that it would go badly. châqar means to search, to examine carefully, to explore or find out. When God is the one searching, everything is open to him. David says, “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me” (Psalm 139:1–4). Samuel was told that “man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). God says, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins” (Jeremiah 17:10), and David told Solomon that “the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts” (1 Chronicles 28:9). Hebrews says that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:12–13). The friends had been passing judgment on Job’s heart, and Job asks whether their own motives, and the truth of their charges against him, would hold up under that kind of search.

“Or as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him?” The verb hâthal means to deride, to cheat or to deal deceitfully. One man can fool another with flattery, pious talk or a show of respect that hides contempt, and Job asks whether they think they can treat God that way. The mockery he means is a false reverence, words that sound devout while they give a distorted picture of God’s character and justice. By insisting that Job’s suffering proved his guilt, the friends implied that God would be unjust if an innocent man suffered, and that picture of God insults him however piously it is put. God sees the heart, and flattery and falsehood are useless before him.

“He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly accept persons.” “Reprove” is yâkach, which means to decide, rebuke, correct, convince or convict, and “surely” makes the warning certain. Job speaks of God’s coming rebuke as a settled thing. “Secretly” is çêther, what is hidden or concealed. The friends’ favouritism was hidden, perhaps even from themselves, because they believed their motives were pure and that they were defending God’s honour. God sees the bias underneath: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3).

This verse shows us something remarkable about God. Partiality is wrong even when the party it favours is God himself. He judges fairly, and he will rebuke anyone who tilts the truth toward his side as surely as he rebukes a judge who tilts it toward the rich. James calls partiality plain sin: “But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors” (James 2:9).

Job’s warning came true. At the end of the book the LORD says to Eliphaz, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath” (Job 42:7–8). The man they accused in God’s name is the one God calls “my servant”, and the men who spoke for God are the ones he rebukes.

“Shall not his excellency make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you?” “Excellency” is sᵉʼêth, from a root meaning to lift or to bear, and it means elevation, dignity or majesty. It carries the same idea of lifting as the lifted face of verse 8. The friends would lift up God’s face as though he needed their favour, while his own majesty is lifted high above them all. “Make you afraid” is bâʻath, to fear or terrify, and “dread” is pachad, terror or dread. God’s majesty is the cause, and the dread that falls on a person is its effect. Job asks it as a question because the answer is plain, as the psalmist asks, “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge?” (Psalm 14:4), and leaves the friends’ own consciences to answer.

The fear of the LORD is where true wisdom starts. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 111:10) and “the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7), and it is “a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death” (Proverbs 14:27). Isaiah says, “Sanctify the LORD of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread” (Isaiah 8:13). This fear is reverence and awe before a holy God, with humble submission to his authority, and a person who has it speaks of God carefully and truthfully. Job’s point is that men who truly felt God’s greatness would have spoken of him with humility and truth. The question also carries a warning. If they go on speaking falsely in his name, the dread that ought to have humbled them will fall on them as judgment.

“Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay.” The word for “remembrances”, zikrôwn, comes from the word for remembering and means a memorial, a record or something kept in mind. Here it is the friends’ memorable sayings, the maxims they quoted with such confidence, and the sense is close to “proverbs of ashes”. Ashes were a sign of mourning and desolation, what is left when something has burned. Job says their wisdom is like that, dry and lifeless and useless for comfort.

“Bodies” is gab, a word for something curved or convex: a back, a mound, the boss of a shield, the rim of a wheel. Here it pictures what the friends stand behind, the raised defences of their argument, and Job says those are made of chômer, the word for clay, mortar or mire. Clay was the common stuff of pots and bricks, easily broken and easily washed away. It also speaks of human frailty, for “the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7), and “we are the clay, and thou our potter” (Isaiah 64:8). The friends thought their arguments were solid. Job says they will crumble as soon as they meet the truth.

People ask why Job speaks so harshly to his friends. His words come from anguish and a sense of betrayal. The friends were expected to comfort him and instead added to his suffering by accusing him, and he overstates their worthlessness to show how deeply they have wounded him. Scripture agrees that human wisdom set up against God’s falls apart: “hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20), and “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him” (Proverbs 26:12). The book’s own poem on wisdom in Job 28 dwells on how far wisdom lies beyond human reach.

What Job warns against was done to Jesus. The chief priests, the elders and all the council, who claimed to guard God’s law, “sought false witness against Jesus, to put him to death” (Matthew 26:59–60), believing they were doing God’s will. They spoke deceitfully for God in the fullest sense. The one they condemned is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), who spoke only what the Father gave him to say (John 12:49). He answered his accusers with the truth and went to the cross as “a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:19).

Even his opponents said of him, “thou regardest not the person of men” (Matthew 22:16), the very fairness Job demands of his friends. He ate with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 5:29–32), spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:7–26) and rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy (Matthew 23:1–36), and he taught, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24).

The friends tried to defend God with arguments, and God has made himself known in his Son. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). Jesus says, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), and he is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), who took on himself the condemnation due to us, and God highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–9). By the righteousness of this one man “the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18), and God “justifieth the ungodly” who believe on him (Romans 4:5).

Job called his friends’ sayings ashes. The words of Christ “are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). He is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3), and whoever builds on his words builds on rock, while the house on sand falls (Matthew 7:24–27). The majesty that should have made the friends afraid is the majesty we now come before through him: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). And to every sufferer he says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

These verses show us a God who wants the truth told about him. He is the God of truth, pleased by honest words and dishonoured by false ones, even when they are spoken in his defence. He judges fairly and favours no one, and he rebukes partiality whichever side it leans toward, his own included. He searches the heart, so motives hidden from the speaker himself lie open to him. His majesty is great enough to make anyone who truly sees it speak of him with care.

The passage also shows us God’s care for the one who suffers. Job asked his friends to hear him, and in the end God was the one who heard. He called Job “my servant”, and he rebuked the men who had spoken wrongly about him, as Job said he would. God’s character is his own defence, so those who speak of him to someone in pain are free to listen first and to say only what is true.