Zophar Warns And Rebukes Job

Zophar Warns And Rebukes Job

Job 11:20 NKJV

[20] But the eyes of the wicked will fail, And they shall not escape, And their hope—loss of life!”

     This verse concludes Zophar’s first speech (Job 11). Zophar, one of Job’s friends, has just argued that Job’s suffering must be the result of hidden sin. In verses 13–19, he paints a picture of how bright and peaceful life would be if Job would repent. Now, in verse 20, he draws a sharp contrast—describing the fate of the wicked.

      Zophar’s statement, though harsh and misapplied to Job, contains a sobering truth: Without righteousness, there is no enduring hope. The hope of the wicked is temporal, bound to worldly gain and self-effort; but the hope of the righteous is eternal, anchored in God. Zophar wrongly assumes Job fits the description of the wicked—but prophetically, his words describe the emptiness of a life apart from God.

     Guzik submits that Job's friends believed in God’s power and His absolute righteousness. They also believed that God would forgive a sinner and take him back into favor if the sinner responded correctly to the punishment God appointed....Nevertheless, the application of this creed – these deeply held beliefs about how life and God and the universe work – was completely wrong in Job’s situation".This is how Keil and Delitzsch submit the end of the chapter: " Zophar manifests a still greater inability than the other two to bring Job to a right state of mind. His standpoint is the same as that of the others; like them, he regards the retributive justice of God as the principle on which alone the divine government in the world is exercised, and to which every act of this government is to be attributed, and it may indeed be assumed to be at work even when the relation of circumstances is mysterious and impenetrably dark to us. This limited view which the friends take of the matter readily accounts for the brevity of their speeches in comparison with Job's.". May our eyes be fixed on Christ, and not on fleeting earthly expectations. Good morning.