Job Spots an Opening (Zophar Mark 2)
Feeling insulted, Zophar 'plays the hurt card', though what he offers is barely different from Bildad Mark 2. (The wicked suffer, and have a bad time and are unhappy). By now the reader must be wondering: surely they know that not all the faithful prosper nor are all the wrongdoers miserable. How can they churn out such platitudes totally isolated from reality? But wait. This very question is emerging in Job's consciousness. Time to take the battle to 'the comforters'. His house has collapsed like a pack of cards. Time to blow down Zophar's pack and extinguish any flicker of light that might be there.
Do they not know that the wicked live to a ripe old age (21:7)? Their houses are safe, their cattle breed successfully, their children mature and enjoy music and dancing. Their message to God is 'Leave us alone'. So what is the point of faithfulness . . . and so on, until he blows a gasket with v 34.
Until now Eliphaz (with his doctrine) and Bildad (with his rationale) have kept the conversation in their comfort zone with nothing fresh to offer. This time round Zophar's cool and practical logic touches a nerve and blows the lid off. What is said is secondary, but ponder what it says about the people who say it. Zophar, remember, is the 'friend' who has learned to live with the complexities he can't handle but is sufficiently detached not to be troubled by them. Maybe Job could do the same. It doesn't work but for the first time it gives Job the opportunity to open up.
Job is thoughtful, not afraid to ask tough questions, and needs someone to tango with him. The friends are not. They don't understand. They don't like it. They are not too keen on him breaking ranks and that is the crucial difference between them. Had the friends probed a little as to what was getting Job so agitated they might have discovered that it was because, stripped of everything he lived by, he had experienced how others live. Without that experience the friends were ill equipped to help; all their ramblings were in vain and, if anything, counterproductive. Time to listen.