Job to Zophar: 1. The conduct of the friends criticized.
I. ARROGANT ASSUMPTION REPELLED.
1. With sarcastic admiration. "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." Irony is a weapon difficult and dangerous to use, apt to wound the hand that wields it as well as the heart that feels it, and seldom becoming on the lips of any, least of all of good men. Admirably adapted to sting and lacerate, it rarely improves or conciliates those against whom it is directed. Yet, not being absolutely sinful, it may be employed with success against arrogant pretension and haughty assumption. Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:27), and St. Paul in his Epistles (Galatians 5:15; Philippians 3:2; 1 Corinthians 4:8), used satire with remarkable effect. Job also in the present instance may be held as justified in retorting on Zophar and his colleagues, whose conduct richly deserved castigation.
2. With vehement self-assertion. "But I have understanding [literally, 'a heart'] as well as you; I am not inferior to you [literally, 'I fall not beneath or behind you']." Modesty, which at all times becomes good men (Proverbs 30:3; Daniel 2:30; John 1:27; 2 Corinthians 3:5), and is specially enjoined upon God's people (Psalms 25:9; Isaiah 66:2; Micah 6:8), and Christ's followers (Matthew 5:3; Matthew 18:4; Romans 12:3; Colossians 3:12; 1 Peter 5:5), need not prevent a frank self-assertion when one is, like Job, unjustly aspersed. It is sometimes false humility to sit with uncomplaining silence beneath the tongue of slander. Provided one indulge not in extravagant assertion, and assume not the credit of gifts and graces which have descended from above, a man may honestly and even boldly maintain his intellectual and moral worth, should these appear to be maliciously traduced. Job might have safely claimed to surpass his antagonists in mental capacity and acquaintance with the culture of the day, in ripe personal experience and ability to interpret the ways of God to man; but with much modesty he only aspires to be their equal, to have a heart (Anglice, a head, a brain) as well as they, and not to be the shallow-pated witling, or wild ass's colt, they insinuated.
3. With scornful contempt. "Yea, who knoweth not such things as these?" The sublime wisdom with which they sought to overwhelm him was the veriest commonplace; their much-paraded teaching but a string of threadbare maxims, "familiar in the mouth as household words," of which he himself could supply an endless series of examples, as beautiful and more correct—which he does in the present chapter. It is a just ground of complaint when old and hackneyed sentiments in morals or religion, science or philosophy, are served up with the air of, and made to do duty for, original discoveries. Yet it is proper to remember that truth once apprehended by the mind does not deteriorate, or become less valuable, by age. Besides, it is of more consequence that a doctrine should be true than that it should be new. Still, new truth, or, what is often mistaken for such, new aspects of old truths, possess a singular fascination for vigorous and independent minds.
II. UNKIND BEHAVIOUR RESENTED.
1. Its character described. "I am as one mocked of his neighbour;" "The just upright man is laughed to scorn." By serving up such trite platitudes as Job had listened to, they had simply been converting him and his calamities into a laughing-stock, because they saw him standing on the sharp edge of ruin, as a traveller might cast away "a despised lamp," of which he had no further need. To make a man the subject of laughter, the butt of ridicule, the object of scornful wit on account of either personal appearance (Genesis 21:9), bodily infirmity (2 Kings 2:23), providential adversity (Lamentations 2:15), or religious character (Psalms 42:3), is severely reprehended by the Word of God (Proverbs 3:34 :; Proverbs 17:5; Proverbs 30:17). Yet good men may expect to receive such treatment at the hands of worldly unbelievers and nominal professors, since the like was meted out to Christ (Matthew 26:67, Matthew 26:68; Matthew 27:27-31; Luke 23:35), David (Psalms 22:7; Psalms 35:16; Psalms 69:11, Psalms 69:12), and the apostles (Acts 2:13), to Old Testament saints (2 Chronicles 30:10; 1 Kings 22:24; Hebrews 11:36), and New Testament preachers (Acts 17:32) and disciples (Jud Job 1:18).
2. Its aggravations recited. These were twofold.
(a) a good man, personally just and upright, and therefore such a one as saints should not have ridiculed;
(b) one who had enjoyed confidential communications with Heaven—a man of prayer, who had called upon God and been answered by him—and therefore not a person to be lightly spoken of or to; and
(c) a miserable sufferer overtaken by adversity—one who was "ready to slip with his feet," and on that account all the more requiring to be comforted instead of scorned.
(a) his neighbours, his friends, at whose hands he should rather have received pity (Job 6:14); and
(b) were themselves in the enjoyment of ease, which might have kindled in their flinty bosoms a spark of sympathy for his misfortunes.
3. Its extenuation stated. It was common. "Contempt for the weak, who totter and fall on slippery paths, is the habitual impulse of those who stand firmly on the firm ground of security, and see no reason why other men should not be as vigorous and 'resolute' and prosperous as themselves" (Cox). The world worships success; failure is its unpardonable sin. When fortune smiles upon a person he is known of all; when adversity engulfs him, he is forgotten by all (Job 8:18). Recall the language of Buckingham on his way to execution: "This from a dying man receive as certain," etc. ('King Henry VIII.,' act 2. sc; 1); and Mark Antony's address over Ceasar's dead body: "But yesterday," etc. (Julius Caesar,' act 3. sc. 2).
Learn:
1. If adversity has its uses, prosperity has its dangers, being prone to engender self-conceit, arrogance, lack of sympathy, and contempt for others.
2. Wisdom is the noblest excellence of man; yet of wisdom no man enjoys a monopoly.
3. It is no disparagement to truth to be styled commonplace, since precisely as it becomes commonplace does it accomplish its mission.
4. As prayer will not always hinder persecution, so neither should persecution by either friends or foes be allowed to extinguish prayer.
5. Few faults of men are so completely bad that no sort of extenuation can be discovered for them.