Job 20:6 Commentary and Bible Study

Zophar attacks any remaining comfort that Job might draw from his past eminence. Knowing where Job’s mind will go to find assurance that he is not utterly rejected by God, he cuts off this source of hope also. He argues, ‘However excellent you may have been, whatever you may have achieved, it is all worth nothing. God sometimes allows wicked men to rise to great heights, only to dash them down again.’ Zophar can account for Job’s past. He remembers well how Job was held in such high esteem and as a man beyond reproach, but he has the discernment to see what others fail to see: that this was all pretence, and Job was a hypocrite all along. Now Zophar is prepared to redefine every aspect of Job’s character, to see the worst in Job where previously he would not have dared to use such language. Does this indicate a longstanding secret bitterness towards Job? There is not a word of comfort or even the possibility of recovery, but a tirade that skilfully robs Job of all hope.He uses very coarse language now, and there is evidence of anger behind his words. He compares Job with his own refuse and says that both will perish together. Men will then ask, ‘Where is this great man whom we admired so much in the past? All trace of him has been removed from the earth and he is gone.’ ‘Your religion, Job, is a fleeting thing.’ It is not merely that Job will soon be judged and die, but that he is hardly even a real person. He is but a dream, and so is his religion. Like a person who wakes up and dismisses an unpleasant dream when he returns to waking life, so the wicked will be dismissed from the minds of those who formerly knew them, once the reality of eternity is come. This world and its sin and darkness will be regarded as a temporary aberration, and one which the righteous will be glad to set aside. Those who belonged to it and who lived in rebellion against God will be counted as nothing when the true light is come. By such words the righteous dismiss the significance of the unrighteous, and console themselves that God will judge them. To those who are persecuted the sight of the wicked is a daily burden. Every time they see them, they remember all their unpleasantness and malice. But the time will come when they are effortlessly removed. God will intervene, and what seemed like an immovable mountain will be taken away by his hand and the landscape cleared. But Zophar is turning these same consolations against Job. The devil can not only pervert truth to tempt Christ, but to try to remove all hope from God’s true children.