Tidy Heresy and the Right Kind of Wrong Text: Job 42:7-9
Introduction: The Folly of Being God's Lawyer
We live in an age that loves tidy systems, especially tidy religious systems. We want a god who fits neatly into our flow charts, a god whose ways can be mapped out on a whiteboard. We want a manageable deity, one whose operations we can explain with three simple points and a concluding illustration. This is the god of the therapeutic deists, the god of the karma peddlers, and, as we see in the book of Job, the god of well-meaning but disastrously mistaken friends.
For forty chapters, we have listened to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They are not buffoons. They are not liberals. They say many things that are technically true. If you were to pull out many of their statements and put them on a coffee mug, they would sound pious and orthodox. They believe in cause and effect. They believe sin has consequences. They believe God is just. The problem is not that they were wrong about everything, but that they were right woodenly. They had a system, a rigid, predictable, one-size-fits-all theology, and they were determined to cram the sprawling, bleeding, mysterious reality of Job's life into it. They came to comfort a man, but they ended up defending their system. They were God's self-appointed lawyers, and they committed malpractice on a cosmic scale.
And at the end of it all, after God has spoken from the whirlwind and revealed His untamable sovereignty, He turns His attention not to Job's wild and desperate accusations, but to the tidy, systematic, and utterly wrong-headed counsel of his friends. What we find here is a profound lesson for all of us. God would rather have an honest man wrestling with Him in the dirt, covered in boils and confusion, than a committee of clean, respectable theologians defending a god of their own invention. The climax of this book is not just the restoration of Job, but the divine rebuke of all attempts to domesticate the Almighty.
The Text
Now it happened after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, that Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My anger burns against you and against your two friends because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. So now, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.” So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as Yahweh told them; and Yahweh accepted Job.
(Job 42:7-9 LSB)
The Divine Indictment (v. 7)
We begin with God's hot displeasure, directed at the chief counselor.
"Now it happened after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, that Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite, 'My anger burns against you and against your two friends because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.'" (Job 42:7)
Notice the object of God's wrath. It is not Job. It is Eliphaz, the elder statesman of the group, and his two companions. God's anger "burns" against them. This is not a mild disagreement. This is holy fury. And why? Because they have not spoken of God what is "right." The Hebrew word here can mean true, correct, or established. They have misrepresented God. They have committed theological slander.
But the shocker is the comparison. They were wrong in a way that Job was right. How can this be? Job accused God of being his enemy, of shooting arrows at him, of crushing him without cause. He teetered on the very edge of blasphemy. The friends, on the other hand, defended God's justice at every turn. So what is the difference? The friends were defending a small, predictable god, a cosmic vending machine where you insert righteousness and get out prosperity. Their god was a principle, a tidy syllogism. Job, in all his messy, agonized confusion, was speaking to and about the actual God of the Bible. He was wrestling with the living, sovereign Lord of the whirlwind. His words were wild, but his address was correct. The friends' words were pious, but they were addressed to an idol of their own making.
They spoke about God as though He were a manageable part of their system. Job spoke to a God who had shattered his system. The friends put God in the dock and cross-examined Job on His behalf. Job put God in the dock and demanded that God Himself testify. God seems to prefer the latter. He prefers the man who argues with Him to the men who explain Him away. Job was wrong about many things, but he was right about the main thing: God is sovereign, personal, and terrifyingly free. The friends were right about some of the minor things, but they were dead wrong about the main thing. They thought God was their intellectual property.
The Prescribed Atonement (v. 8)
Because their sin was theological, the remedy is covenantal and liturgical. God Himself prescribes the way back.
"So now, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has." (Job 42:8)
Bad theology is not just an intellectual mistake; it is a moral and spiritual folly that requires blood atonement. God does not tell them to write a letter of apology or to attend a seminar on pastoral care. He commands a massive sacrifice. Seven bulls and seven rams. This is a kingly offering, a sacrifice of the highest order. This tells us the magnitude of their offense. To misrepresent the character of God is a capital crime. Their words were not harmless. Their folly was not innocent. It was a profound dishonoring of the Almighty, and it required a profound sacrifice.
But notice the scandalous arrangement. They are not to go to their own priest. They are to go to the man they have been tormenting for dozens of chapters. They must go to "My servant Job." God rubs it in. The man they accused of being a secret sinner, the man they lectured and hectored, is now their appointed mediator. They must submit to his authority and his intercession. This is a glorious humiliation. God vindicates His servant Job by making him the priest for his accusers. Job is put in the position of a type of Christ, standing between foolish men and the wrath of God.
And God's reasoning is explicit: "For I will accept him." The Hebrew is literally, "I will lift up his face." God will receive Job's prayer on their behalf. Their acceptance is entirely dependent on the acceptance of their mediator. They have no standing before God on their own. Their piety, their arguments, their reputations, are all worthless. They must come under the covering of the man they maligned. This is the gospel in miniature. We have all spoken foolishly about God. We have all, in our pride, tried to make Him in our own image. And we have no hope, except to come to our Mediator, the true and better Job, Jesus Christ, and plead for Him to pray for us, knowing that the Father accepts Him and will therefore not do with us according to our folly.
The Obedient Submission (v. 9)
The conclusion of this episode is a picture of simple, humbling obedience.
"So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as Yahweh told them; and Yahweh accepted Job." (Job 42:9)
To their credit, they do it. There is no record of them arguing or trying to justify themselves. The whirlwind that silenced Job apparently silenced them as well. They had been the masters of words, the kings of the long-winded speech, but now they are silent and obedient. They take their bulls and their rams, they go to Job, and they do what God commanded. Their repentance is seen not in more words, but in their actions. They submit to the man they had set themselves above. They trust in the sacrifice God prescribed. They depend on the prayers of the one they had wronged.
And the final phrase is key: "and Yahweh accepted Job." Again, the Hebrew is that God "lifted up the face of Job." In accepting Job's intercession for his friends, God publicly vindicates him. He honors him. The man who was brought low, who sat in dust and ashes, scraping his sores with a piece of pottery, is now the man whose face is lifted up by God Himself. His restoration begins not when his wealth is returned, but when he is established as a righteous intercessor, a true servant of the Lord.
Conclusion: Wrestling is Better Than Posturing
The central lesson of this entire book comes to a sharp point here. God is not looking for polished defenders of a theological system. He is looking for honest men and women who will engage with Him as He is, not as they would like Him to be. The friends of Job were theological taxidermists. They had God stuffed and mounted on the wall of their study, and they were very proud of their work. Job was a wrestler, like Jacob at Peniel, who held on to the living God through the night and would not let go, even when his hip was out of joint.
Our natural tendency is to be like the friends. We want to be the ones with the answers. We want to be the ones who can explain suffering away with a few neat formulas. We are uncomfortable with mystery, and we are terrified of a God who does not operate according to our expectations. But this passage is a divine warning against that kind of pride. It is a call to humility. It is a call to recognize that our tidy systems will shatter when they collide with the raw sovereignty of God.
And it is a profound display of the gospel. We are all Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. We have all spoken foolishly. We have all, in our pride, misrepresented God. Our only hope is that God has not left us to our folly. He has provided a sacrifice, His own Son. And He has appointed a Mediator, our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus. We must come to Him, abandoning our own self-justifications, and plead for Him to pray for us. And the glorious promise of the gospel is that the Father always accepts Him. The Father always lifts up the face of His beloved Son. And because we are in Him, He lifts up our faces as well, not according to our folly, but according to His infinite grace.