Introducing Job's Comforters: What Not to Say to the Suffering Believer [Job 4:1; Job 8:1; Job 11:1]

Today before we launch into the cycle of speeches between Job and his friends we’re going to introduce them and get to know them a bit before we jump into the interactions. If you still have the initial outline I gave you when we started the book of Job you’d see that this is Part 2 of the book…Job and his friends. This is from Job 4-31. We’ve already seen the friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite and they’ve done nothing yet except show up and sit in silence with Job.

Last week we considered the Christian hymn writer William Cowper who battled with depression his entire life. In his hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” Cowper assures us, “Behind a frowning providence [God] hides a smiling face.” But is it true? When providence frowns and the believer’s circumstances are filled with pain, is there a face smiling with sovereign love? Or is this a fancy, sugary make-believe worthy only of the world of Walt Disney? Cowper himself sometimes doubted the truth of his own hymn in his times of deep depression.

In Job 3 we heard Job utter a black heartrending lament of utter desolation. At the end we left him deeply alone and desperately devoid of hope, wanting the forward progress of the created order to be set in reverse—light to turn back to darkness and his life to dissolve in death. It was a bleak chapter. The chapter ended with a terrible question ringing in our ears.

This blameless believer whose possessions are all lost, his children killed, and his health destroyed cries out, “Why?” (3:20). Why indeed? We must ask this question, for it is not suffering that destroys a person, but suffering without a purpose. Why? What do we say to ourselves when we sit where Job sat or to others when we sit with them as Job’s three friends did?

There is a time for saying nothing. A time when trauma so numbs feeling that words lose their usefulness, when loss cauterizes the senses and all someone can do is stare blankly into space, and all we can do is sit alongside and maybe hold a hand. But after that the question comes: Why?

So what do we say? And not just afterward but before suffering comes. This may sound bleak but all Christians ought to be engaged in preparing one another for suffering, so that when suffering comes we may be so shaped by God’s Word that we may be able, as it were, to put our hands into the hand of God even in the darkness.

The privilege of speaking with sufferers is one that is easily abused. Throughout the next several weeks we are going to learn from the mistakes of three men who said a great deal to a sufferer, and it wasn’t very helpful. The men are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, Job’s “comforters,” as they are ironically called. They say nothing for a week (2:11–13). But after Job’s lament (Job 3) they say much. They speak for nine Bible chapters in nearly three rounds of heated argument.

The three friends are not clones of each other in what they say, and we shall see that there is a measure of development in their speeches as we move through the three cycles. But by and large they say the same things in similar ways, and for the purposes of this overview we will consider them together so that we are introduced to the common features of their bad pastoral theology.

To get a feel for the exchanges here are three preliminary points about the tone of the exchanges, to orient us and get a feel for what is going on.

#1) The Comforters Are Not Impressed with Job

For example, in 8:2 Bildad is clearly riled by Job: “How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?” Eliphaz says much the same in 15:2, 3. While Job’s appearance had made his friends sad (2:12), his words make them angry. Why? Because as the exchanges go on, Job repeatedly insists he is not being punished for some particular sin, for he has nothing on his conscience that could justify this treatment from God. So it seems that God is being unfair. This makes his friends livid. We can understand why.

So in Job 11:2–6 Zophar wishes that God would intervene and speak, because that really would shut Job up and show him what empty babble he is pouring out. (It never crosses Zophar’s mind that God might actually do this, let alone what God’s verdict might be on him and his friends, as we see in 42:7.) As the exchanges continue, Job’s friends become thoroughly fed up with having to listen to him (e.g., 18:2a). They wish he would shut up and listen properly to them.

#2) Job Is Not Impressed with His Comforters

The friends are unimpressed with Job, but Job is not exactly filled with gratitude toward them either. The frustration and dislike are mutual. There is, in diplomatic language, a full and frank exchange of views. Job had hoped for refreshment from them, but they were like a riverbed to which a parched traveler turns aside, only to find it dry as dust (6:14–30).

“Miserable comforters are you all” (16:2), and again in 16:3 he calls them windbags and wishes they would shut up. Or hear the biting sarcasm of Job in 12:2: “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you.” “Oh, yes, you are so wise! You are where wisdom is at. When you die, I am really worried that there won’t be any wise people left in the world.” Who said there is not sarcasm in the bible. This is sharp and cutting sarcasm (cf. 26:2ff.). It is prompted by the error and cruelty of his friends, for they “torment” Job and “break [him] in pieces with words” (19:2).

#3) God Is Not Impressed with Job’s Comforters

For twenty-four chapters (4–27) Job and his friends have a blazing exchange. So who is right to be angry? Are the friends right to be angry because Job accuses God of being unfair? Or is Job right to be angry with his friends for not offering him any substantial comfort? It would be helpful to know.... We are told at the end of the book when the Lord says to Eliphaz, “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right” (42:7)

So we learn that God is not impressed with Job’s comforters. The anger of Job at his friends is an echo of the anger of God that burns against them.

So when we read the nine Bible chapters of comforters’ speeches, we are reading words that are, by and large, a load of rubbish. Except that they are not entirely so! We find ourselves agreeing with many parts of their speeches. If it were total rubbish that would be much easier. It is always like that with false teaching; it is dangerous because it is nearly true. So we will need to look carefully at where Job’s comforters go wrong.

We will consider in turn their system of theology, their pastoral tone, and their gaps or omissions (the vital things they don’t believe).

Their System of Theology

The theology that underlies all three friends is very simple and clear.

1. God is absolutely in control. (We have seen that this is indeed one of the foundational markers laid down by our narrator in Job 1, 2.)

2. God is absolutely just and fair.

3. Therefore he always punishes wickedness and blesses righteousness—always (and soon and certainly in this life). If he were ever to do otherwise, he would necessarily be unjust, which is inconceivable.

4. Therefore, if I suffer I must have sinned and am being punished justly for my sin.

(And, presumably, if I am blessed I must have been good—although this isn’t relevant here, so they don’t develop this side of it.)

This logic undergirds almost all they say. For example, “Remember: Who that was innocent ever perished?” (4:7) “You see,” implies Eliphaz, “if the innocent did perish, the world would be unfair, and that cannot be.” Again in 5:17–26 Eliphaz says in essence, “Job, your suffering is God’s discipline. You sinned, and because God loves you he disciplines you. So learn from his discipline.” Now the Bible does teach the truth that God disciplines his spiritual children (Proverbs 3:11, 12, quoted in Hebrews 12:4–13). Eliphaz is sure Job has sinned because he sees Job suffering. It is an entirely valid argument, assuming that Job has sinned.

The emotional stakes are raised in 8:4–7, where Bildad draws another conclusion from their system. In effect he said, “So your children died Job? Well, that means they must have sinned.” This is of no comfort to Job, even though Bildad interprets the friends’ way of thinking sensitively and tells Job (8:5–7) that it may not be too late for Job himself. “If you repent, God may yet restore you.” Again, within the terms of their mind-set this is all correct.

The friends’ frustration with Job becomes evident when Zophar pushes things even further. “Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves” (11:6b). In essence he is saying, “God has even forgotten or overlooked some of your sin, Job. Presumably if he hadn’t, you’d already be dead like your children.” Zophar is fed up with Job’s protests of innocence. “Count yourself lucky because God hasn’t really punished you for all your sins!” And then again, as with Bildad in 8:4–7, in 11:13–19 there is another appeal for Job to repent as they deduce that he ought.

The reason the friends feel so strongly about it all is that they have grasped that unless God is just and fair, the moral fabric of the universe will disintegrate. We see this in the imagery of 18:3–5, where Bildad complains (18:3) that Job is treating them as if they are “stupid.” Job is getting very angry (18:4a), but it is outrageous of him to imagine (18:4b) that “the earth” may be “forsaken for you, or the rock be removed out of its place”—that is, that the moral order and structure of the cosmos can be rearranged just to suit one individual’s whims. “You cannot expect a cosmic exception to be made for you, Job. It is an absolute rule that ‘the light of the wicked is put out’ [18:5]. So, Job, if you are suffering, you must be wicked.” And so it goes on. But Job won’t accept it. He stubbornly refuses to repent of sins he hasn’t committed. His conscience is clear.

So in 22:5–9 Eliphaz runs out of patience and tells Job precisely what he has done wrong. “Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities” (22:5). “And I’ll be specific, Job, since you force me to it. You’re a rich man, aren’t you? Well, don’t expect us to believe you got rich quite as honestly and justly and kindly as you would have us think! Come clean, you hypocrite!” And again (22:21–30) there is an appeal for Job to repent. It is a winsome appeal and a beautiful expression of the offer of the gospel. Bible studies have been led on this passage. But they have usually pulled it out of its context, which is one of utterly inappropriate words directed to the wrong man.

So that is the comforters’ outlook. Both sides of this system lie deep in the human psyche. We see one side of the formula all the time in people’s thought process… Something good has happened to me, therefore I deduce somewhere sometime in my life I’ve done something good.

The other side of the comforters’ worldview surfaces again and again even today. It appears when an elderly Christian says, as they suffer much pain in old age, “Have I done something terribly wrong? What have I done to deserve this?”

It comes into the open when a Christian, suffers deep depression, and cries out, “I must have done something terrible in the past.”

It’s evident when a missionary in China, “fears, I must have done something wrong because God has punished me.” Yes, say the comforters to all these sufferers, you must have.

What are we to make of this theological system? It will not do to dismiss it out of hand as stupid, for it is not stupid. The first two parts of their formula (from earlier) are absolutely right. God is absolutely in control, and God is absolutely just and fair. Further, we need to recognize that there are many ways in which we may and do suffer as a direct result of our own sin.

In Psalm 32 the psalmist says that when he kept his sin secret, the pressure of unresolved guilt was destroying him physically. Only when he confessed it and turned from it did his health return.

If I get drunk and drive and crash and injure myself, it is my fault.

If I commit adultery and it leads, as it typically does, to misery and often violence (Proverbs 6:32–35), that misery is the result of my sin.

If someone hurts me and I refuse to forgive him, and I nurse resentment and become a hard and bitter person, the resulting damage to my character is my fault because I ought to forgive.

So the comforters might be right when they appeal to Job to repent. And yet we must remember that three times in Job 1, 2 (once from the narrator, 1:1, and twice from the Lord, 1:8; 2:3) we have been told that Job is “blameless.” So the comforters make a big mistake. Job does not need to repent for any sin that has led to his suffering. He is not being punished for sin. To say that is to add a cruel burden to his grief. Yet the comforters say exactly that for nine chapters.

So let us examine their way of thinking.

Their Tone is arrogance

They are very sure they are right. For example, at the end of Eliphaz’s first speech he says, “This we have searched out; it is true” (5:27). “So you’d better listen, Job.” The reason they are sure is that their authority is that of tradition (8:8–10). “This was the tradition handed down to us,” they say, “so it must be true.” (They did not understand, what many don’t understand, that a tradition may simply be an error in its old age.)

Again in 15:7–10 Eliphaz pulls rank on Job. “What do you know that we do not know?” (15:9). “We are senior to you and more experienced” (15:10, paraphrase). For the friends there is no puzzle or enigma in the world as they observe it. There is no chink in their dogmatic armor. It is all so tidy, so well-swept. Whatever we do, we must not let evidence get in the way of a good theory.

Why are they so confident?

They Have No Honesty

They have inherited these dogmas, and they are not prepared to look at the world as it is. But they ought to because God’s truth fits with God’s world. When we look at the world through the spectacles of God’s word, the world comes into focus and makes sense. We must not take our theory and squeeze the world into its mold. There is an air of unreality about their theology; it just doesn’t fit the real world. It may work when people agree to believe it and don’t look too closely outside, but it has no power and no persuasiveness for those outside.

They Have No Sympathy

They do not seem to have been where Job is. So in 4:2–5 Eliphaz says in effect, “I can’t quite see why you should be so miserable, Job. You used to be the one offering comfort to others, and I must admit you were very good at it. Well, that wasn’t so difficult when you weren’t suffering; but now it’s your turn, and you don’t like it, do you?” They are sorry for him at the start, but they don’t understand his pain. They are more attached to their theories than to Job their friend. It is a little like the quip by the author James Dobson, who said about parenting, “I used to have four theories on child-rearing and no kids. Now I have four kids and no theories.” These comforters have plenty of theories about suffering, but we wonder if they have ever been there.

They Have No Love

It does not look as if the friends really love Job. They do not listen to his cries. The cycles of speeches are like dialogues in which one side (the friends) are deaf to the cries and protests of the other. They do not respond to what he says and do not engage with him as a fellow human being in need. The German writer Goethe once said that we can only understand what we love. This is true in all human relationships. Because they do not love Job, they cannot understand him.

So we should avoid their tone even as we jettison their system.

What they don’t believe

The trouble with the comforters is that so much of what they say looks right. It would be a useful exercise to read their speeches with a pencil in hand and to put a check mark in the margin beside every statement they make with which we agree. There would be many marks and generally high marks for their doctrinal orthodoxy. So much so that it is easy to think the friends are doctrinally sound teachers whose fault is simply that they are pastorally insensitive.

But more careful consideration suggests that their fault lies deeper than pastoral insensitivity. It is the content, and not only the tone, of their teaching that is false. Their problem is not so much what they do say as what they don’t. (This is so often the case with false teaching; we need to be on the lookout not only for the wrong teaching Bible teachers give but also for vital Biblical ingredients they habitually omit.)

There are three vital truths they don’t believe.

No Satan

They have no place in their thinking for Satan. We know from Job 1, 2 that Satan is a real and influential spiritual person. We know that the whole tragedy of Job has its origin in heavenly arguments between the Lord and Satan. But the comforters have no place in their thinking for Satan or for the spiritual battle. There are hints that Job does, in 3:8 where he speaks of Leviathan and in 26:12ff. where he refers to the serpent monster Rahab (another expression in Old Testament symbolism of the great spiritual enemy of the Creator God). We shall return to Leviathan when we reach Job 41. But the point here is that Job’s friends have no place for spiritual forces of evil. In their world evil is purely a human phenomenon. It has no spiritual dimension; there is no spiritual battle. How wrong they are.

No Waiting

For them judgment is now. The wicked are punished now; the righteous are blessed now. But the promises of judgment are not for now. They are for the end. So, for example, Psalm 1 makes a clear distinction between the righteous and the wicked. According to Psalm 1:5, “the wicked will not stand in the judgment.” And the judgment is (usually) in the future. The comforters’ “now theology” seems so neat but is actually disastrous. It is like a slot machine: put in some goodness, and out pops a can of blessing; put in some badness, and out pops a can of poison. Just like that. In terms of the popular Matrix films, they would think of God like a deterministic computer program, just part of how the matrix is operating, fixed rules that determine how it all runs.

In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy says to Charlie Brown, “There is one thing you’re going to have to learn Chuck: you reap what you sow; you get out of life what you put into it, no more and no less.” Snoopy mutters from the corner, “I’d kind of like to see a little margin for error.” The Bible does indeed teach that we will reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7ff.); in the end there will be no margin for error. But not immediately because what we sow has to grow until the harvest.

In Jesus’ parable (Matthew 13:24–30) the wheat and the weeds grow together. And they will not be separated until the harvest—that is, the last judgment. Then the wicked will be punished and the righteous saved, but not until then. The comforters are right to believe in retributive justice; they are wrong to assume that it will necessarily be immediate retributive justice. One day the world will be orderly as it was in creation, but our current world isn’t.

What are we to make of Bible passages that seem to speak straightforwardly of blessings following obedience and curses following apostasy? For example, Proverbs 3:1ff. promises, “Let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you”—and yet they didn’t bring peace to Job! (Many other examples could be cited, especially from Proverbs and Deuteronomy.) There is a distinction between the general truth of such sayings and absolute “every case” truth.

There is perhaps an analogy with a city like New Orleans after the hurricane. The city has clear planning and anticipate such events. If I wanted to go from point A to point B after the hurricane, I would in general still be best advised to go by the main roads. But whereas before the hurricane that would always be the best route, now I might find that the main road is blocked or that a building had collapsed to open up an unplanned route.

It is a little like this with the created order after the disruption of the fall of humankind. Generally, to keep God’s commandments, to live in line with his created order, will bring peace and prosperity. For example, if I am honest and work hard I will do better. But not always. And the final proof that righteousness pays will not come until the final judgment, when all disruption will be put right and the creation reordered as it ought to be.

The comforters turn religion into an impersonal slot machine formula. In their view there is no hoping for a promised future but only living in the present. There is no prayer to an unseen God but only moralizing. There is no love for a hidden God or love for people in pain but only well-reasoned answers. There is no personal yearning and longing and faith but only sight.

So faith, hope, and love are dissolved into moralism and lectures. There is a kind of Christianity that belongs to this family, that revels in the immediate. I expect the blessing of God now; I expect to see the triumph of God now; I expect to know the answers now. There is to be no waiting. We shall see as we move forward in the book of Job how very different it is with Job himself.

The last thing the friends don’t believe is...

No Cross

In the context of the whole Bible, perhaps the deepest error and omission of the friends is this: they have no place for innocent suffering. They think that if the righteous were ever to suffer or perish, it would be a blot on the moral landscape. As Eliphaz asks, “Who that was innocent ever perished?” (4:7).

The Bible places against that question a large eternal cross.

On the cross the innocent one perished in the place of the guilty, that we might not finally perish. In a profound sense the sufferings of Job are the cost of grace. Or to be more accurate, the sufferings that Job foreshadows will be the cost of grace. With their tidy impersonal theological code, the comforters miss the heart of the universe and the heart of the gospel. That Christ, the innocent one would suffer and die for the guilty.

And though they miss the heart of the gospel and are in the wrong, their speeches are in the Scriptures, all of which are able to “make [us] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). So we cannot just skip these speeches. For each one we must ask ourselves in what way it is intended by God to profit us and to lead us to faith in Christ.