Lives of Scripture

Zophar the Naamathite was the third and consistently harshest of Job's friends, speaking twice in the recorded dialogue (Job 11, 20) and apparently having nothing left to say by the third cycle, where his expected speech is simply absent from the text. His first response to Job is blunt to the point of cruelty: "know then that God forgets a part of your iniquity" -- meaning Job was, if anything, being punished less severely than he actually deserved (11:6). He challenged Job to consider the unsearchable depths of God's wisdom, arguing that if Job would only put away his sin and turn to God, his life would brighten again, life's troubles forgotten "like water that has passed by" (11:13-20). His second speech turns to a vivid, almost gleeful description of the swift and total destruction awaiting the wicked, their prosperity fleeting and their pleasures turned to poison in their bodies -- rhetorically powerful, but again wrongly aimed at Job's actual innocence, which the reader already knows from the book's opening chapters (20:4-29). Zophar's theology, like his companions', rightly held that God is just and sin has consequences, but wrongly assumed suffering always proves guilt. God's final rebuke at the book's close was directed at Zophar along with Eliphaz and Bildad for "not spoken of Me what is right," requiring a sacrifice and Job's intercession on their behalf before they were restored to God's favor (42:7-9).