Commentary - Job 11:1-20

Bird's-eye view

In this eleventh chapter of Job, we are introduced to the third of Job’s friends, Zophar the Naamathite. And if we thought Eliphaz was philosophically detached, and Bildad was historically rigid, Zophar comes on the scene as the doctrinal pugilist. He is the systematician of the group, the man with the tidy theological chart. He has heard Job’s agonized cries and his protests of innocence, and he is having none of it. For Zophar, the equation is simple: immense suffering is the direct result of immense, and likely hidden, sin. He brings a certain kind of brutish confidence to his counsel, a confidence born not of pastoral wisdom but of a theological system that has no room for mystery or for a righteous man suffering under the hidden purposes of a sovereign God. Zophar’s speech is a master class in being doctrinally correct in the abstract and pastorally calamitous in the particular. He extols the unsearchable wisdom of God, and then proceeds to act as though he has it all figured out. He calls Job to repentance, which is always a good call, but he does so on the basis of a faulty diagnosis. He is a doctor who insists on amputating a leg because the patient has a headache. His words are full of high truth about God's majesty, but they are weaponized against a man already pierced through with many sorrows.

The central error of Zophar, and of all Job’s comforters, is not that they believe in God’s justice. The Bible teaches that God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Their error is in applying this general truth as a rigid, one-to-one formula for every individual circumstance, thereby eliminating the possibility of trial, testing, or the inscrutable wisdom of God that moves in ways we cannot trace. They are right woodenly, and in being so, they become miserable comforters and false accusers of the brethren. Zophar’s speech, then, serves as a solemn warning against the kind of pride that masquerades as doctrinal precision.

Outline

Job 11:1-3

Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said, “Shall a multitude of words go unanswered, And a man of lips be in the right? Shall your boasts silence men? And shall you mock and none rebuke?”

Zophar does not ease into his counsel. He comes out swinging. He has been sitting there, listening to Job’s long lamentations and his fierce declarations of integrity, and his patience has run out. He opens by dismissing Job’s entire defense as a “multitude of words.” This is the classic retort of a man who has no answer for the substance of an argument, so he attacks its length. Job has been pouring out the anguish of his soul, and Zophar hears only the noise of verbosity. He calls Job a “man of lips,” which is to say, a man who is all talk and no substance. He accuses Job of boasting and mockery, twisting Job’s desperate pleas for vindication into arrogant self-justification. Zophar’s assumption is that if Job were truly righteous, he would be quiet. He would be stoic. He would not be making such a scene. But this is a profound misunderstanding of biblical piety. The Psalms are filled with the loud cries of righteous men in anguish. David was certainly a "man of lips" before God. Zophar’s theology has no category for a loud, messy, honest lament from a man of faith. He wants a tidy faith, a quiet faith, a faith that doesn’t trouble the theological systematizers. So he begins by trying to shame Job into silence.

Job 11:4-6

You have said, ‘My learning is pure, And I am innocent in your eyes.’ But would that God might speak, And open His lips against you, And tell you the secrets of wisdom! For sound wisdom has two sides. Know then that God forgets a part of your iniquity.

Here Zophar moves from attacking Job’s style to misrepresenting his substance. He quotes Job as saying, “My learning is pure, and I am innocent in your eyes.” While Job has maintained his integrity, this is a caricature of his position. Job’s claim has been to righteousness, not to sinless perfection or doctrinal infallibility. Zophar then makes a pious-sounding wish: “would that God might speak.” This is a rhetorical jab. Zophar is utterly confident that if God were to speak, He would prove Zophar right and put Job in his place. He imagines God opening His lips against Job. There is no sense here that God might speak for His servant, as He will in the end.

Zophar then delivers what he believes is a profound insight: “sound wisdom has two sides.” And what is the other side that Job is missing? It is that Job is actually far more wicked than he realizes. “Know then that God forgets a part of your iniquity.” This is a staggering piece of pastoral malpractice. He tells a man scraped raw by suffering that his current agony is actually a discount. God is going easy on him. The torment he is experiencing is only a fraction of what he truly deserves. Zophar thinks he is defending God’s justice, but he is slandering God’s character and crushing a bruised reed. He presents a God who is a meticulous accountant of sin, and whose mercy consists of not charging the full price. This is a far cry from the God who blots out transgressions for His own sake and remembers our sins no more.

Job 11:7-9

“Can you find the depths of God? Can you find the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? Its measure is longer than the earth And broader than the sea.”

Now Zophar launches into a sermonette on the transcendence and inscrutability of God. And on this point, everything he says is magnificently true. Can a finite man take the full measure of an infinite God? Of course not. God’s wisdom is higher than the heavens, deeper than the grave, longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. This is glorious, biblical truth. Paul would later say something very similar in Romans: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). The problem is not with the doctrine, but with its application. Zophar uses the unsearchable wisdom of God as a club to beat Job into submission. The subtext is this: “Job, God is infinitely wise and you are not. Therefore, the obvious explanation for your suffering, that you are a terrible sinner, must be true. Stop questioning and start repenting.” He uses God’s transcendence as a tool to shut down Job’s legitimate questions, rather than as a foundation for humble trust in the face of mystery. True wisdom acknowledges that because God is so vast, His purposes in our lives might be beyond our simple cause-and-effect calculations.

Job 11:10-12

If He sweeps by or shuts up, Or calls an assembly, who can turn Him around? For He knows worthless men, And He sees wickedness, so will He not carefully consider it? Yet an empty headed man will obtain a heart of wisdom, And the foal of a wild donkey is born a man.

Zophar continues his theme of God’s absolute sovereignty. If God acts, if He imprisons, if He judges, who can possibly stop Him? Again, this is true. God is sovereign over all His creation. And because He is sovereign, He is also omniscient. “He knows worthless men, and He sees wickedness.” The implication is clear: God has seen the worthlessness and wickedness in Job, and that is why He has called an assembly for judgment. Zophar’s logic is a straight line. God is just. God is sovereign. Job is suffering. Therefore, God is justly punishing Job’s sin. There is no room in this tidy system for the testing of a righteous man, or for a cosmic battle in the heavenly realms of which the sufferer knows nothing.

He concludes this section with a proverb that is dripping with contempt. An empty-headed man becoming wise is as likely as a wild donkey’s colt being born a human. The reference to the “empty headed man” is aimed squarely at Job. He is saying that Job, in his current state of protest, is as brutish and unteachable as a wild animal. The only way for him to gain wisdom is through a radical transformation that is, in Zophar’s estimation, highly unlikely. It is the ultimate intellectual put-down, dressed up in proverbial piety.

Job 11:13-20

“If you would set your heart right And spread out your hand to Him, If wickedness is in your hand, put it far away, And do not let unrighteousness dwell in your tents; Then, indeed, you could lift up your face without moral defect, And you would be steadfast and not fear. For you would forget your trouble, As waters that pass by, so you would remember it. And your lifetime would arise brighter than noonday; Darkness would be like the morning. Then you would trust, because there is hope; And you would search around and rest securely. You would lie down and none would make you tremble, And many would entreat your favor. But the eyes of the wicked will come to an end, And escape will perish from them; And their hope is the expiring of their soul.”

Having laid out his harsh diagnosis, Zophar now offers his prescription. It is a classic formulation of the covenantal blessings that follow obedience, and it sounds very much like something you would read in Deuteronomy. And taken on its own, it is a beautiful description of the fruit of repentance. The conditions are straightforward: set your heart right, pray to God, put away your sin, and cleanse your household. If Job does this, the promised results are glorious. His shame will be removed, he will be secure and fearless, his troubles will be forgotten like a dried-up riverbed, his life will be brighter than the noonday sun, and he will rest in hope and security. This is the prosperity that follows piety. It is the gospel of the tidy world.

And to cap it all off, he contrasts this bright future with the grim fate of the wicked. Their eyes will fail, their escape will be cut off, and their only hope is to breathe their last. This final verse is a thinly veiled threat. “This, Job, is your future if you do not take my advice.” The entire speech, then, is a package deal. It presents a world where the righteous always prosper and the wicked always suffer, visibly and immediately. It is a world with no paradoxes, no long-suffering, no dark nights of the soul for the faithful. It is a world that runs on a clean, predictable, theological engine. But it is not the world of the Bible. It is not the world where a righteous Job sits on an ash heap, and it is not a world that has any room for a sinless Christ hanging on a cross. Zophar’s tidy system, in the end, has no room for the gospel.