Wisdom Truck 18

 

There are a lot of references to wisdom in the back and forth of Job- and not all of them have anything to do with real wisdom.  But patterns emerge, and that is what I want to look at this week.  

I start in chapters 8-9, Where friend number 2, Bildad, gives his speech.  Bildad, while still walking the same line of, "God only punishes the wicked", focuses on the power and the mercy of God, rather than the ad hominem attacks the others seem to favor.  Job, in response, echoes God's power and mercy:

Job 9:1  Then Job answered and said: 

Job 9:2  “Truly I know that it is so: But how can a man be in the right before God? 

Job 9:3  If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. 

Job 9:4  He is wise in heart and mighty in strength —who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?— 

"Wise in heart" being directed at God is one of the few legitimate uses of the word in the following chapter.  If you read chapter 9, you see that to Bildad's reasonable speech, he gives a reasonable response, before lapsing back into his grief and his pleas to God to tell him why.  But before he finishes, he expresses the two main contentions with his friends so far:

Job 9:20  Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse. 

Job 9:21  I am blameless; I regard not myself; I loathe my life. 

Job 9:22  It is all one; therefore I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’ 

Thus, he attacks their 2 assertions- God only punishes the guilty, therefore, Job must be guilty.

That brings us to the third friend- if you can call him that- Zophar.  As David Jeremiah points out, in chapter 11 Zophar calls Job a liar:

Job 11:2  “Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be judged right? 

Job 11:3  Should your babble silence men, and when you mock, shall no one shame you? 

Job 11:4  For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in God's eyes.’ 

Job 11:5  But oh, that God would speak and open his lips to you, 

Job 11:6  and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! For he is manifold in understanding. Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves. 

Zophar speaks of God's wisdom, but passes judgment on Job because of calamity and not evidence.  Note that never once do these so called friends ever do the first two things they should have done:  Spoke to God for Job, or questioned to find out what Job could have possibly done wrong.  Not surprisingly, Job has a curt reply to Zophar, and by far my favorite line in the debates:

Job 12:1  Then Job answered and said: 

Job 12:2  “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. 

Job 12:3  But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these? 

Job's answering to Zophar is brutal and swift; and he quickly returns to his true debate, the one he's having with God.  To Zophar, he says that he should look at "the tents of the wicked," that they are actually secure (at least physically), and that if they would just use their eyes and their brains, they would see that the precept they judge Job on is wrong:

Job 12:7  “But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; 

Job 12:8  or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. 

Job 12:9  Who among all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? 

Job then spends a couple chapters expressing himself to God.  Which of course Eliphaz- the most influenced by Satan, dismisses as "empty wind."  He's more interested in the fact that Job challenges their concept of God's judgment:

Job 15:7  “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? 

Job 15:8  Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? 

Job 15:9  What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us? 

Job 15:10  Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father. 

Now we see the 'Democrat tendencies' of Eliphaz; he's more interested in his own pride of place than in anything Job has to say.  Either Job agrees with him, or Job is wrong.  For huis part, Job is getting tired of it- but asks the pertinent question:

Job 16:1  Then Job answered and said: 

Job 16:2  “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. 

Job 16:3  Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? 

What provokes him?  By this time, it should have been obvious that the 'spirit' Eliphaz saw at the start (see last week) is running their show.  Rather than seeking mercy and actually HEARING Job, they are all off on their own thing.  Bildad, at this point, has taken one of Job's responses completely out of context as an insult:

Job 18:2  Until when will you set a snare for words? Understand, and afterwards we will speak. 

Job 18:3  Why are we counted as beasts, or seem stupid in your sight? 

Job basically responds with, "You think you've been insulted?"

Job 19:1  Then Job answered and said: 

Job 19:2  “How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? 

Job 19:3  These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? 

Job 19:4  And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. 

It has gone way beyond talking comfort to a friend by now.  Eliphaz then opens up by accusing Job of EVERYTHING he can come up with:

Job 22:1  Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: 

Job 22:2  “Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself. 

Job 22:3  Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are in the right, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless? 

Job 22:4  Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you and enters into judgment with you? 

Job 22:5  Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities. 

Job 22:6  For you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing and stripped the naked of their clothing. 

Job 22:7  You have given no water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. 

Job 22:8  The man with power possessed the land, and the favored man lived in it. 

Job 22:9  You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless were crushed. 

Job 22:10  Therefore snares are all around you, and sudden terror overwhelms you, 

Job 22:11  or darkness, so that you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you. 

How like our modern political process: accuse your opponant of every sin without evidence, and hope enough people are enough 'like beasts' to believe it without checking.  And just like it is with our liberal left, it starts with taking God out of the conversation.

At this point, Job does the smartest thing he could do... he stops responding to them, and focuses on God.  

I think we are seeing here that Satan doesn't have to pull out all the stops:  Just infect one leader (Eliphaz), and the others follow along, never stopping to think if the other guy might be right, or even at the contradictions in their own position.