Job 20:1 Commentary and Bible Study

As Job utters these words Zophar is outraged. ‘You – ’ he says, ‘you think you are going to live for ever?’ And he denies Job’s grasp of eternal life, and charges him with greed and power-lust. The chapter is a torrent of abuse against Job – one accusation after another. It parallels the devil’s ways of bringing us into despondency at times when we are already low. What Zophar says to Job has sufficient truth in it to sound feasible, but it is a completely false assessment of his character and spiritual state.Job has already dealt with the main lines of reasoning of the comforters. Their arguments have been torpedoed. On the whole the comforters ignore all that Job says; their minds are made up and fixed. Zophar has little new to say. The common theme of all his arguments is that although the wicked may seem for a time to prosper, and although many may be taken in by this, their true character comes to light when God takes away all that he previously gave them. He feels deep agitation and this forces him to speak. It arises from the fact that Job justifies himself and clearly the friends are having great difficulty in silencing him and convincing him of his wickedness. Job has even rebuked the three comforters and dared to turn the tables on them by warning them of impending judgment because of the way in which they have spoken. He has previously answered Zophar with cutting words (12:2) and this is the first time that Zophar has been able to respond, but he lacks the understanding that he claims to have. His zeal was the greater because it seemed to him that the good instruction he had given to Job had been despised, and so the Lord’s counsel had been rejected. He is convinced that he is right, that Job is a hypocrite, and that it is offensive for hypocrites to get away with their self-justification. It seems to him that Job, although a hypocrite, has enormous skill in turning the argument his way and bringing up all manner of issues that distract, but none of which succeed in denying the basic problem: that he is evidently under the judgment of God because of his secret sin.