Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 11-15.

I often struggle with the Book of Job because the things Job’s friends say have a lot of truth to them, but God condemns them roundly at the end of the book.  However, today I noticed that when Zophar responds to Job, her responds to a straw man, he takes something Job said and paraphrases it to make it more extreme than what Job actually said.  Zophar claims that Job said that his beliefs were flawless, but that is not what Job said.  Job did say that he was blameless, and that is not true because the Bible makes clear that all have sinned.  However, in the context one might take Job’s statement as meaning that he was no more worthy of blame than his friends, who were not suffering as he was.  Zophar went on to insult Job by essentially calling him witless.  Zophar was there to offer Job comfort in his suffering, so he should not have misstated Job’s argument, and he most certainly should not have insulted him.  Job replies by pointing out that Zophar was speaking for God dishonestly, something we should never do.  Further, Job put his claims of innocent in context by asking his friends how they would fair if God were to examine them in detail, would they show any more innocent than Job?  When our friend, or anyone else for that matter, is suffering we should not condemn them,  Also, when we debate others, something which we should save for a time when they are not suffering, we should be careful to argue against positions they actually hold, not what we think they meant by what they said.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.