Job 13:1 Commentary and Bible Study

We could read these words as if Job was engaged in a petty quarrel in which both sides were saying something similar, but were anxious to prove they were right. That would be a mistake. This is a matter of deeply significant principles. On Job’s side is a true evangelical understanding of God, but on the comforters’ side is a theology of human merit and comparative righteousness.Job’s exposition of God’s way, his majesty, his unquestionable authority over all events, his independent acts carried out without consultation of any of his creatures: all of this shows that Job understands just as much and more about the sovereign ways of God than his three companions. Moreover his words are much closer to reality than theirs for he recognises that God does not always work in the way that we would expect and that it is impossible to discover perfect justice in his government of this world considered in isolation. Job has not simply repeated the same points that they have made, but has gone beyond them to show that he has his own personal assessment of what God has done. He expresses himself modestly: ‘I also know, I am not inferior to you.’ In speaking like this he understates the true situation. He too has reflected on the ways of God and this is his starting point in evaluating the affairs of life. But this is the basic; the three comforters have not gone beyond the basics. Yet this assessment does not explain what is happening to Job now, and he has questions which he urgently wishes to put to the Lord. He blames the three for not having recognised the inadequacy of what they have said, and he challenges them to start speaking with more sincerity.