Today started out with Zophar speaking to Job, and he thought that Job deserved the worst, claiming that Job’s sins were the cause of his troubles. Zophar’s failure to put himself in Job’s place showed his lack of compassion, nor is he entirely correct in his condemnation: Job had sincerely challenged what he perceived to be God’s unjust actions, but he has not mocked God (as Zophar accused him of doing).
Zophar thought Job was shallow and lacked an understanding of the true nature of God. He spoke of the height, depth, and width of God’s knowledge, the same way Paul will end up speaking about Christ’s love. Zophar claimed it would take a miracle to change Job.
Zophar assumed that Job’s problems were rooted in his sin, and all Job had to do was repent, and then his life would become blessed and happy. But nowhere God guarantees a life “brighter than noonday” simply because we are his children. He has higher purposes for us than our physical prosperity, or the people courting our favor.
Job replied similar to before, being broken down into two parts: he spoke to his three friends, then to God. For the first time, Job reacted with sarcasm to the harshness of his counselors, and such responses made his friends brand him as a “man whose feet were slipping.”
Job appealed to all creation to prove that God does what he pleases…
Job continued with the next section which stated that God is sovereign in the created world, and especially in history. The rest of the poem dwells on the negative aspects of God’s power and wisdom: the destructive forces of nature, how judges become fools, how priests become humiliated, and how trusted advisers are silenced and elders deprived of good sense. This is all in contrast to the claim of Eliphaz that God always uses his power in ways that makes sense.
Job continued that he would still hope in God. He did however think that his counselors had become completely untrustworthy and called them quacks. He accused them of showing partiality toward God by telling lies about Job. Someday God would examine and punish them for their deception.
Job continued to argue his defense of God’s judgement, and he was going to seek vindication from God and believed he would receive it. Job wanted two things from God, and asked his friends to listen to what he would say; 1.) Job wanted God to withdraw his hand of punishment, and 2.) start communicating with him.
Chapter 14’s theme is centered around man’s insignificance and inherited impurity, saying that life at best is brief and fragile; living a life like a flower that is short then gone, not like a tree that revives even after it has been cut down.
Job’s pessimism here raised not from skepticism, but from God’s apparent unwillingness to do something immediately for a person like him, whose life had become a nightmare of pain and mourning.
Up to this point, Eliphaz had been the most sympathetic of the three friends, but now he had run out of patience with Job and denounced him more severely than before. But, Job hurled charges back at him saying that Eliphaz presumed to be wise enough to sit among the members of God’s council in heaven, when in reality he was no wiser than ordinary elders and sages on earth.
Eliphaz chided Job for replying in rage to his friends’ attempts to console him with gentle words, which he believed came from God himself. But Eliphaz had been guilty of cruel insinuation, and the other two counselors had been even more malicious. Genuine words of comfort for Job were very few indeed.
Today ended with a poem in the fate of the wicked.