Job 15

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: ² “Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? ³ Should he argue in unprofitable talk, or in words with which he can do no good? ⁴ But you are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God.⁵ For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. ⁶ Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; your own lips testify against you. ⁷ “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? ⁸ Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? ⁹ What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us? ¹⁰ Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father. ¹¹ Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you? ¹² Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, ¹³ that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth? ¹⁴ What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? ¹⁵ Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; ¹⁶ how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water! ¹⁷ “I will show you; hear me, and what I have seen I will declare ¹⁸ (what wise men have told, without hiding it from their fathers, ¹⁹ to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them). ²⁰ The wicked man writhes in pain all his days, through all the years that are laid up for the ruthless. ²¹ Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him. ²² He does not believe that he will return out of darkness, and he is marked for the sword. ²³ He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand; ²⁴ distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle. ²⁵ Because he has stretched out his hand against God and defies the Almighty, ²⁶ running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield; ²⁷ because he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat upon his waist ²⁸ and has lived in desolate cities, in houses that none should inhabit, which were ready to become heaps of ruins; ²⁹ he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the earth; ³⁰ he will not depart from darkness; the flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart. ³¹ Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his payment. ³² It will be paid in full before his time, and his branch will not be green. ³³ He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his blossom like the olive tree. ³⁴ For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery. ³⁵ They conceive trouble and give birth to evil, and their womb prepares deceit.”

Job 16

¹ Then Job answered and said: ² “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. ³ Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? ⁴ I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. ⁵ I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain. ⁶ “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me? ⁷ Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. ⁸ And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face. ⁹ He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. ¹⁰ Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. ¹¹ God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked. ¹² I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; ¹³ his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground. ¹⁴ He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior. ¹⁵ I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust. ¹⁶ My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness, ¹⁷ although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure. ¹⁸ “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. ¹⁹ Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. ²⁰ My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, ²¹ that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor. ²² For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

Thomas Merton compiled a fascinating collection of the sayings of the desert fathers, monks who had gone out into the desert and to whom people would journey to hear wisdom and observe their lives of simplicity and detachment. Interestingly, the desert fathers addressed the issue of arguing on more than one occasion. For instance, Merton passed on a story about two monks living together in the same cell who were literally incapable of arguing.

There were two elders living together in a cell, and they had never had so much as one quarrel with one another. One therefore said to the other: Come on, let us have at least one quarrel, like other men. The other said: I don’t know how to start a quarrel. The first said: I will take this brick and place it here between us. Then I will say: It is mine. After that you will say: It is mine. This is what leads to a dispute and a fight. So then they placed the brick between them, one said: It is mine, and the other replied to the first: I do believe that it is mine. The first one said again: It is not yours, it is mine. So the other answers: Well then, if it is yours, take it! Thus they did not manage after all to get into a quarrel.[1]

How wonderful would it be to be incapable of arguing? But that is not the norm, is it? The norm for human interaction is conflict and arguments, even, and perhaps especially, it sometimes seems, between friends. But arguments among friends, at least prolonged or frequent arguments, are the most irksome because one of the tenets of true friendship is that they build us up, encourage us, and help us survive the unpleasantness of life.

The famed novelist George Eliot once wrote this about friendship:

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.[2]

That is beautifully put. Friends do not weigh words. Friends give the benefit of the doubt and seek to understand what is being said instead of what technically was said. Friends do not keep an argument going, assuming the worst behind the actual words spoken, looking to trap one another in a verbal snare. Friends assume that the most clumsily voiced words were voiced by accident or perhaps out of pain. Friends seek to understand, not to condemn.

Almost every one of these attributes of friendship was quickly abandoned in the prolonged exchange between Job and his friends. They were so quickly abandoned and so absurdly violated over such a long period of time that we rightly wonder if indeed these men qualify as friends at all!

In Job’s next encounter with Eliphaz, chronicled in Job 15 and 16, we see a continuation of this argument between these friends of the kinds of unfortunate unfriendliness that keeps such arguments going. Because the basic points have been made before, we will take this opportunity to step back, take a bird’s eye view, and assess this particular exchange from the vantage of this question: what were Job’s friends doing that were deteriorating their friendship with Job so quickly? What was their method and how do they serve as a cautionary tale for us today concerning what not to do with our friends?

Eliphaz demonstrates poor friendship by being argumentative, by refusing to grant his friend the benefit of the doubt, and by losing a sense of patience and compassion.

Eliphaz begins his next verbal volley by continuing his basic argument concerning Job’s foolishness and guilt but also by ratcheting up the intensity of his attack on Job.

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: ² “Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? ³ Should he argue in unprofitable talk, or in words with which he can do no good? ⁴ But you are doing away with the fear of God and hindering meditation before God.⁵ For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. ⁶ Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; your own lips testify against you. ⁷ “Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought forth before the hills? ⁸ Have you listened in the council of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? ⁹ What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not clear to us? ¹⁰ Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, older than your father. ¹¹ Are the comforts of God too small for you, or the word that deals gently with you? ¹² Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, ¹³ that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth? ¹⁴ What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? ¹⁵ Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; ¹⁶ how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water! ¹⁷ “I will show you; hear me, and what I have seen I will declare ¹⁸ (what wise men have told, without hiding it from their fathers, ¹⁹ to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them). ²⁰ The wicked man writhes in pain all his days, through all the years that are laid up for the ruthless. ²¹ Dreadful sounds are in his ears; in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him. ²² He does not believe that he will return out of darkness, and he is marked for the sword. ²³ He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand; ²⁴ distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle. ²⁵ Because he has stretched out his hand against God and defies the Almighty, ²⁶ running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield; ²⁷ because he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat upon his waist ²⁸ and has lived in desolate cities, in houses that none should inhabit, which were ready to become heaps of ruins; ²⁹ he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the earth; ³⁰ he will not depart from darkness; the flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart. ³¹ Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his payment. ³² It will be paid in full before his time, and his branch will not be green. ³³ He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his blossom like the olive tree. ³⁴ For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery. ³⁵ They conceive trouble and give birth to evil, and their womb prepares deceit.”

Let us observe some of the more unfortunate aspects of Eliphaz’s attack:

• Eliphaz indulges in sarcasm by calling Job “a wise man” (v.2)
• Eliphaz makes a painful reference to Job’s words as an “east wind” (v.2). This is painful in light of the loss of Job’s children due to a destructive wind (1:19).
• Eliphaz accuses Job of not fearing God (v.4).
• Eliphaz indulges again in sarcasm concerning Job’s wisdom (v.7-8).
• Eliphaz refuses to consider Job’s central argument and accuses Job again of wickedness (v.20-27).
• Eliphaz makes another personally painful statement by alluding to houses “which were ready to become heaps of ruins” (v.28).

Simply put, Job’s friends were acting like jerks!

Steven Lawson has observed that “the entire time Job had been answering his friends, they were busy reformulating their same argument. Instead of listening to Job they appeared to be waiting for him to stop talking so they could relaunch their scathing attack.” He then likened Job’s friends to a young man who once had to learn a hard lesson from Socrates.

A young man once came to Socrates, the noted philosopher, to be instructed in oratory. The moment the young man was introduced, he began to talk in an incessant stream. This went on for some time until the great philosopher could stand it no longer. Putting his hand over the young man’s mouth, Socrates said, “Young man, I will have to charge you a double fee.”

            “Why?” the young pupil asked.

            “Because I will have to teach you two sciences,” Socrates replied. “First, the science of holding your tongue; and then the science of using it correctly.”[3]

Both of these are areas in which Job’s friends needed to learn to be true friends: how to hold their tongues and how to use them correctly.

To return to Merton’s collection of the desert fathers, he quotes an “Abbot Pastor” as saying, “Get away from any man who always argues every time he talks,” and he quotes “an Elder” as saying, “And if anyone speak to you about any matter do not argue with him. But if he speaks rightly, say: Yes. If he speaks wrongly say to him: You know what you are saying. But do not argue with him about the things he has said. Thus your mind will be at peace.”[4] In both of these, the desert fathers were touching on a fact that is amply demonstrated in the book of Job: argumentative people will truly rob you of your joy and possibly of your sanity.

One can almost hear Job’s friends reloading as he is talking. All of this is not to say, I hasten to add, that Job himself does not indulge in many aspects of argumentation that are extremely unhelpful to discourse. However, as the end of the book will reveal, Job was fundamentally correct concerning his basic assertion about his own innocence (though he was clearly incorrect about numerous other points he made), and God will demand that his friends repent of what they did to Job in their approach.

Job’s friends are therefore a case study of how not to disagree with somebody. Instead of lighting a candle, they cursed his darkness, as the old saying goes. And, truth be told, if we look back on any of our own relationships that has fallen apart, it is most likely that we will find these same injurious elements: making things personal, refusing to interpret one another with charity, refusing to believe one another on issues that we cannot externally verify one way or the other, assuming the worst, demonizing the other, and losing patience and compassion.

Be it Job’s friends or modern marriages or international relationships between countries, these are the corrosive elements that render actual communication null and void.

Job counters that his friends are terrible friends and that they have actually become a continuation of the wound that God originally inflicted upon him.

Job’s frustration and disappointed are reflected in his own words of anger. Again, Job is not innocent himself. He, too, is quick to yield sarcasm and personal attacks, but, again, Job will, in time, be shown to have been fundamentally correct, though not completely correct. Let us hear Job’s complaint:

¹ Then Job answered and said: ² “I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. ³ Shall windy words have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? ⁴ I also could speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could join words together against you and shake my head at you. ⁵ I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain. ⁶ “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged, and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me? ⁷ Surely now God has worn me out; he has made desolate all my company. ⁸ And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face. ⁹ He has torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. ¹⁰ Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. ¹¹ God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked. ¹² I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; ¹³ his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground. ¹⁴ He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior. ¹⁵ I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust. ¹⁶ My face is red with weeping, and on my eyelids is deep darkness, ¹⁷ although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure. ¹⁸ “O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. ¹⁹ Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. ²⁰ My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, ²¹ that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor. ²² For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.

We see, yet again, Job’s basic contentions:

• I am innocent (v.17).
• God has turned on me.

The first statement is correct. The second statement is incorrect. But there is another note in chapter 16, and that is Job’s argument that his friends have become part of his calamity, part of God’s judgment upon him, an extension of the original tragedy that befell him. He communicates this in these ways:

• Job’s friends are adding to his misery (v.2)
• Job’s friends’ words are a continuation of the destruction wind (v.3).
• Job’s friends are speaking from a vantage point of relative ease (v.4).
• Job’s friends are a desolation (v.7).
• Job’s friends have become a vicious mob assaulting him (v.10).
• Job’s friends are acting like “ungodly” and “wicked” men (11).
• Job’s friends “scorn” him (v.20).

Here is what the withholding of friendship looks like from the other side, from the perspective of the one from whom it is withheld. A friend who abandons friendship in order to win an argument is something worse than an enemy. We expect to be wounded by our enemies, not so by our friends. A friend turned enemy represents the spoiling of a beautiful thing. When angels fall they become demons. When friends fall they become tormentors.

See the words of Job and consider what it means to betray a friend, how very cruel our words appear when they are stripped of love, compassion, patience, and care. “A friend,” it has been said, “is the one person who walks in when everybody else has walked out.”

True enough. But what of the one man who walks in when everybody else has walked out just in order to kick the one who has been abandoned? Well, he is something of a devil, or worse.

Jesus is a true friend.

In the light of this example of friendship violated, it is refreshing and beautiful to see what Jesus said about friendship. What Jesus says in John 15, for instance, is most humbling and powerful.

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. ¹⁷ These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

There is a friend who will not turn on you, who will not abandon you, who will not lose patience with you, who will not unjustly parse your words, who is not looking to trap you in your words, who listens with understanding, whose correction is true, whose wounds are the wounds of a friend: Jesus.

In 1855, Joseph Scriven wrote these words to comfort his mother.

What a friend we have in Jesus,

All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit,

O what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry

Everything to God in prayer.

Have we trials and temptations?

Is there trouble anywhere?

We should never be discouraged;

Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Can we find a friend so faithful

Who will all our sorrows share?

Jesus knows our every weakness;

Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden,

Cumbered with a load of care?

Precious Savior, still our refuge,

Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Do your friends despise, forsake you?

Take it to the Lord in prayer!

In His arms He’ll take and shield you;

You will find a solace there.

Blessèd Savior, Thou hast promised

Thou wilt all our burdens bear

May we ever, Lord, be bringing

All to Thee in earnest prayer.

Soon in glory bright unclouded

There will be no need for prayer

Rapture, praise and endless worship

Will be our sweet portion there.

Philip Wise has described a very interesting study on friendship coming out of the twelfth century. It was written by the Cistercian abbot of Rievaulx, a man named Aelred.

In his book Spiritual Friendship, Aelred analyzes the origin of friendship, the fruits of friendship, and the characteristics required for unbroken friendship…His unique emphasis is the concept of “spiritual friendship,” by which he referred to the kind of love that is godly and thereby prefigures the life to come. This kind of friendship is spiritual rather than carnal. It exists in the nature of God. He concludes in a famous passage that “Deus amicitia est” – God is friendship.[5]

Ah! Deus amicitia est.

God is friendship.

This is seen nowhere more clearly than in the person of Jesus Christ.

Deus amicitia est.

Christus amicitia est!

Amen.

 

[1] Thomas Merton, The Way of the Desert (New York, NY: New Directions), p.67.

[2] Calvin Miller, The Path of Celtic Prayer: An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2007), p.80-81.

[3] Steven J. Lawson, Job. Holman Old Testament Commentary. Vo.10 (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2004), p.134,133.

[4] Merton, p.47,29.

[5] Philip Wise, “Friendship as a Theological Virtue.” Theology in the Service of the Church: Essays Presented to Fisher H. Humphreys. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008), p.259-260.