Job's Persecutors (AKA Comforters)

Lesson three in the Job series.

Three wise men come from afar to comfort Job. The Hebrew word nacham which means comforted or consoled is used nine times in the book of Job. That means that comfort is one of the main themes of Job's story. Who are these wise men anyway? And did they comfort Job?

All three men were like kings--chiefs of the lands they came from. They were wealthy and prosperous and they came from places that were known for wisdom. Eliphaz was a descendant of Abraham through Esau, and Bildad was also a  descendant of Abraham through one of the sons he had by Keturah, his second wife after Sarah died. Job himself was a descendant of Abraham's brother Nahor as was Elihu who comes later. We don't know much about Zophar but he may have been a king of the Minaeans. All of these men put their faith in their own wisdom. According to Eliphaz, wisdom comes with age. In Job 15:7-10 Eliphaz says to Job, 

"Are you the first man who was born?

Or were you brought forth before the hills?

Have you listened in the council of God?

And do you limit wisdom to yourself?

What do you know that we do not know?

What do you understand that is not clear to us?

Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us,

Older than your father."

This is probably in answer to Job who has just said to them, "Shouldn't wisdom come with age and understanding in length of days? With God are wisdom and might, he has counsel and understanding" (Job 12:12-13). Now I should warn you that in many Bibles verse 12 says, "Wisdom is with the aged and understanding in length of days." However, you miss the intended irony if you read it that way. The literal meaning of the Hebrew asks the question. Job is contrasting the alleged wisdom of the elders with the wisdom that comes from God and saying that their wisdom is no wisdom at all. This is going to be important later when God picks up Job's argument in chapter 38. 

So the three wise men heard about Job's plight and they came to comfort him. But when they came to him, he was so disfigured by his disease that they couldn't even recognize him. He looked like a living corpse. Maggots were already consuming Job's decayed flesh and his teeth and bones were rotting. So they just sat there for seven days. Then Job cried out--more like bellowing and roaring in the Hebrew--about his pain, cursing the day of his birth and wishing he had never been born. (Jeremiah copies Job's lament in the Book of Lamentations chapter 3 as if he had memorized it.) After Job's outburst, the friends begin to talk.

You would expect that seeing someone in this much pain and suffering, the friends would respond with compassion, but they did not. They all wanted to analyze Job and his problem and discover the source of the calamity. They all believed in the sovereignty of God and they all believed that God is just. They all thought that the righteous prosper and wicked suffer calamity. But their god was not merciful and neither were they. You are what you worship. None of the friends believed that a righteous person could suffer like this so they began by telling Job to confess his sins. Job understood why his friends were so adamant about sin producing suffering.  It was because they were afraid. You see, if something like this could happen to a man who was as blameless as Job was, then it could happen to anybody--even them. Job 6:21 says, "...you see my calamity and are afraid." 

Job refused to repent because he had not sinned. This made the friends really angry so they started inventing sins that Job must have committed. Here is a sample from the speech of Eliphaz:

"For you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing

and stripped the naked of their clothing.

You have given not water to the weary to drink,

and you have withheld bread from the hungry.

~Job 22:6-7

They also told Job that he was the cause of his children dying and that his children must have been killed because they were sinning. This is called slander and God abhors slander. It was all the worse because these men were considered to be the experts. They did not recognize Job as God's servants at all. In slandering Job, they were unwittingly slandering God. This reminds me of the Pharisees in Jesus' day. They thought they were the experts on God, but when Jesus came, they didn't even recognize him as God's Son!

The more the friends slandered Job, the more Job protested his innocence and that made the friends even angrier. They did say a lot of right things about God--just like the Pharisees did, but when you only get something half right, it is as good as getting it wrong. Fifty per cent on a test will still get you an F. No true friend of God would slander God that way and no true friend of God would slander God's servant either. So we know that these friends were unbelievers. 

Finally, the three friends had exhausted all their resources and they quit talking. The three of them were no match for the dying man who went on to lay out his full case complete with a closing argument to boot. So Job won that round. The score is now God: 3 and Satan: 0.

One of the lessons we should learn from Job's persecutors is that sometimes people will say things to us that sound true, but even if everything they say is true, it may not be the whole truth and ends up being pure deceit. Lots of Christians get sidetracked and derailed this way. The only way you can fight it is to know the whole truth. 

Stay tuned for part 4 where we will look at the prayers and prophecies of Job during this horrific trial.