Job 13:8 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Will you accept his [God’s] person?’ Will you show partiality towards God? That seems like a strange idea. Of course, one would think, we must accept and respect God’s person. We must defend the honour of God. We must take his side in any dispute. Yes, but not with partiality. It is possible to show partiality, even to God. That is what the comforters are doing, says Job. Satan has confused the situation by bringing them forward as false advocates of God, advocates he never asked for.Between one who offers a partial defence and the one who accepts this defence, there is tacit winking at some aspect of the truth. The comforters were inviting God to become a partner with them in this deceit. It was as if they said to the Lord, ‘We both know that there is something problematic here, which we are unable to come clean about, and therefore we will agree between ourselves to hide these awkward facts and represent the situation as different to what it is.’ Is God going to enter into such an agreement? Can he ever be ashamed of anything he does, that he should need a preferential defence? Certainly not; he glories in all his ways. He is ashamed of nothing he does. If his creatures are ashamed of what he does, so much the worse for them.It is a strange situation – God needing to be excused or defended by his creature. As a judge might show partiality out of respect for some high-ranking person who has come before him, so, Job contends, the three are being swayed by the person of God into abandoning strict justice, and condoning what, in another, they would not condone. In this respect they are showing partiality and acting like false judges. In fact, they are defending a God of their own imagination, and not the true God. They are defending him from acts which he has not asked to be defended from. They are ashamed because they do not know the true God; they are ashamed because he is not as they imagine him to be. Job questions the ways of God, but he has a far more realistic view of what those ways are. When had God ever asked the comforters to defend him, yet they had put themselves forward as his champions. Job brought an accusation against God (Barnes), but they take sides with God and defend him regardless of the nature of Job’s complaint and even though they do not have answers to his complaints. It was right for them to take the Lord’s side, but it was not right for them to do this at the expense of integrity and to pretend that they had answered Job’s complaint when they had not.