Job started out today explaining how his friends were terrible at comforting him. Job still saw himself as God’s target and viewed his situation as the reverse of Eliphaz’s description. Job’s situation of misery can be summarized by saying even though he is innocent, he still continued to suffer.
Job realized that he probably wouldn’t live long enough to be vindicated before his peers, and his only hope was that in heaven he would have a friend who would plead with God on his behalf.
Job began questioning if he had any hope left, and asked God for a guarantee that he was right, and that he was not guilty of sins deserving his punishment.
The guarantee Job asked for was not provided, so he felt that God was responsible for making him an object of scorn. Zophar had promised that Job’s repentance would turn his darkness into light, and Job made a parody of that advice, saying his only hope was the grave.
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and resented what he perceived to be a belittling attitude from Job, and considered his emotional reaction as self-centered and irrational. Then there was another poem on the fate of the wicked.
Bildad wanted to convince Job that he was wrong when he claimed that the righteous would suffer and the wicked prosper. He was certain that every wicked person gets paid in full, in this life, for his wicked deeds.
Then Job answered asking how long his friends would torment him and break him into pieces with their words. They had no right to interfere or behave as if they were God.
Job continued to believe that God was his enemy, not knowing who his true enemy was, attributing his suffering to God. In Job’s mind God was at war with him.
Job was being rejected by everyone he knew. His children were gone, and his wife, brothers, friends, and servants all found him repulsive. Even little children scorned him.
Sections 19:23-27 are probably the best-known and most-loved passages in the book of Job, reaching a high point in Job’s understanding of his own situation of his relationship to God. Its position between two sections in which Job pleads with and then warns his friends causes it to stand out even more boldly.
“I know that my Redeemer lives” has been appropriated by generations of Christians. Job expressed confidence that ultimately God would vindicate his faithful servants in the face of all false accusations.
Job knew that his disease would eventually bring his death, but he was also certain that death was not the end of existence, and that someday he would stand in the presence of his Redeemer and see him with his own eyes.
Then Zophar the Naamathite answered with another poem about the fate of the wicked. Zophar took Job’s words as a personal affront since Job had dared to say that Zophar himself was due for punishment.
Like Bildad, Zophar concluded his speech with a summary statement in which he claimed that all he had said was in accord with God’s plans for judging sinners.
Then Job answered that he was complaining to God because he thought he was responsible for his condition as Job perceived it; trying to contemplate the upside-down situation in which the wicked flourish.
Job continued on the topic of wickedness saying the opposite of his friends. Job insisted that the wicked, who want to know nothing of God’s ways and who even consider prayer a useless exercise, flourish in all that they do.
Far from dying prematurely as Zophar assumed, they live long and increase in power. Bildad’s claim that the wicked have no offspring or descendants, Job flatly denied.
Job disavowed the unholy counsel of the wicked and knew that God was in control, but such knowledge made God even more of an enigma to him. This conversation between Job and his friends ended because the friends could not convince Job of his guilt, but Job could not acknowledge what wasn’t true.