Job’s Reply to Zophar

“With the Ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.  With Him is wisdom and strength, He hath counsel and understanding”…..”With Him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are His.”  Job 12:12-13;16

Zophar finished his unrealistic picture of how the righteous and the wicked live.  Life for the righteous is not a bed of roses as Zophar claimed.  They suffer, and the wicked seem to escape punishment for a long time, but they will face God’s judgment.  This was Job’s argument.  When Zophar treated Job as if he was the most wicked man that ever walked the earth, Job must have wanted to explode.  He had been maintaining his innocence all along, but his three visitors weren’t buying it.  It didn’t fit their narrative.

Job used some sarcasm on his visitors by pointing out how they thought they knew everything that there was to know, and how the world would experience such a tragic loss when they were gone.  He then let them know that he wasn’t stupid.  Everything that they had been saying about the workings of the LORD was known to him.  He might have even known more than them because suffering allows for more insight and a deeper knowledge into God’s ways than does prosperity and a life of ease.  Job’s visitors were condescending and judgmental.  How would that help him?

Job felt that his friends were mocking him because he claimed to be calling on the LORD for mercy, but they believed that Job had no fellowship with God because of Job’s suffering.  They felt that God didn’t speak to men like Job.  How many people today deny that men and women can’t have a close, personal relationship with the Lord?  Job stated that it was a well-known fact that the wicked prosper usually through dishonest means.  Sometimes their wealth extends unto generations after them.  Matthew Henry wrote, “We cannot therefore judge of men’s piety by their plenty, nor of what they have in their heart by what they have in their hand”.

Job recognized the fact that wisdom comes with age and life’s experiences.  The problem with that, though, is that by the time someone finally becomes a treasure chest of wisdom, he or she is too old and weak to apply it to their own lives.  “If I only knew then, what I know now”.  If the younger generation is smart, they will listen to what the old folks say and apply it to their lives so that perhaps they will not make the same mistakes.  God did not attain His wisdom through experience or old age.  His wisdom is part of who He is, the sovereign LORD.  When we rely on Him, we receive His wisdom to help us make decisions and solve problems.  His way is always the best and right way.

God’s strength and wisdom are immeasurable.  Those who are deceived and those who deceive are both under His control.  All must answer to God sooner or later.  All are either judged at the cross or in God’s courtroom.  There is no escaping His watchful eye.  Job began to list specific people according to the roles they play in life.  Counsellors and judges whose egos are huge and who think they earned their positions completely on their own merit will be shown to not be the fair, impartial, and concerned professionals they claim to be.  God can also reduce a mighty king to a slave.  Every evil king in scripture came to a bad end.  Good kings suffered as well because no person that God created is perfect.  Even the priests and pastors were not spared.  God can reduce princes to ordinary common folks.  The strongest warriors can be made to become weak as children.  No one is beyond the reach and control of the LORD no matter what they believe they can do in their own strength.

Nothing is hidden from “the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13b).  Job was well acquainted with the sovereignty, omniscience, and omnipresence of the LORD.  God made Himself known as the holy and righteous God to whom His creation is accountable.  There is no darkness so great that God’s light cannot expose those evil deeds that are committed by the wicked.  There are no secrets to which God is not privy.  Even the shadow of death or death itself can’t hide evil from God.  He controls the leaders of the world.  He can cause them to rise and fall at His discretion.  Often, He allows a leader who is a bad leader to govern a people as a judgment against them for their sin.   Those who choose evil end up groping in the dark like a drunken man not knowing which way to turn, not knowing who he can trust, and leaving a pitiful legacy for history to record.

For a man of whom his so-called friends claimed to be wicked and an enemy of God, Job certainly knew a lot about God.  Most evil folks know little to nothing about God because if they did and if they believed His word to be true, one would think that they would change their ways.  However, some do know quite a bit about the sovereign God of the universe yet choose to blatantly sin before Him, almost like they were daring Him to act upon their insolence.  Well, they will get their wish eventually.

Next week:  Job was not yet finished.  He still had plenty more to say to his visitors.