Interlude
Interlude
You will be spending a good deal of time with Job’s three friends, so you had better get acquainted with them.
All three of the men were old (Job 32:6), older than Job (15:10), but we assume that Eliphaz was the oldest. He is named first (2:11), he spoke first, and the Lord seems to have accepted him as the elder member of the trio (42:7). He was associated with Teman, a place known for its wisdom (Jer. 49:7). Eliphaz based his speeches on two things: his own observations of life (“I have seen”—Job 4:8; 5:3, 27 NASB) and a frightening personal experience he had one night (4:12–21). Eliphaz put great faith in tradition (15:18–19), and the God he worshipped was an inflexible Lawgiver. “Who ever perished, being innocent?” he asked (4:7); and a host of martyrs could have answered, “We have!” (And what about our Lord Jesus Christ?) Eliphaz had a rigid theology that left little or no room for the grace of God.
Bildad must have been the second oldest of the three since he is named second and spoke after Eliphaz. In a word, Bildad was a legalist. His life-text was, “Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers” (8:20). He could quote ancient proverbs, and like Eliphaz, he had great respect for tradition. For some reason, Bildad was sure that Job’s children died because they also were sinners (v. 4). The man seemed to have no feeling for his hurting friend.
Zophar was the youngest of the three and surely the most dogmatic. He speaks like a schoolmaster addressing a group of ignorant freshmen. “Know this!” is his unfeeling approach (11:6; 20:4). He is merciless and tells Job that God was giving him far less than he deserved for his sins (11:6)! His key text is, “Knowest thou not this of old … that the triumphing of wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?” (20:4–5). Interestingly enough, Zophar speaks to Job only twice. Either he decided he was unable to answer Job’s arguments or felt that it was a waste of time trying to help Job.
All three men said some good and true things, as well as some foolish things; but they were of no help to Job because their viewpoint was too narrow. Their theology was not vital and vibrant but dead and rigid, and the God they tried to defend was small enough to be understood and explained. These men perfectly illustrate Dorothy Sayers’ statement, “There’s nothing you can’t prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.”
Why would three men speak to their friend as these men spoke to Job? Why were they so angry? There is a hint of an answer in Job’s words: “Now you too have proved to be of no help; you see something dreadful and are afraid” (6:21 NIV). The three men were afraid that the same calamities would come to them! Therefore, they had to defend their basic premise that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. As long as they were “righteous,” nothing evil could happen to them in this life.
Fear and anger often go together. By maintaining his integrity and refusing to say he had sinned, Job undermined the theology of his friends and robbed them of their peace and confidence; and this made them angry. God used Job to destroy their shallow theology and challenge them to go deeper into the heart and mind of God. Alas, they preferred the superficial and safe to the profound and mysterious.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar have many disciples today. Whenever you meet a person who feels compelled to explain everything, who has a pat answer for every question and a fixed formula for solving every problem, you are back at the ash heap with Job’s three friends. When that happens, remember the words of the Swiss psychologist Paul Tournier:
We are nearly always longing for an easy religion, easy to understand and easy to follow; a religion with no mystery, no insoluble problems, no snags; a religion that would allow us to escape from our miserable human condition; a religion in which contact with God spares us all strife, all uncertainty, all suffering and all doubt; in short, a religion without the cross. (Reflections [New York: Harper & Row, 1976], 142)
We wonder how Job’s three friends would have explained the cross to the two Emmaus disciples (Luke 24:13ff.)! Let’s listen in on the first round of speeches.