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One by one the attacks on Job by his friends are becoming more severe. Zophar begins, ‘you lie and you make mockery’ (11:3)… “For thou hast said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes” (11:4). You will not find that Job has said this. He has said, “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse” (9:20); a very different reading. Zophar keeps on rolling, ‘I would like to see God Himself answer you’ (11:5). God is being kind: “God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” (11:6).
Zophar goes on to talk about the power of God and says, ‘He sees vanity and wickedness.’ The implication is clear: Job's claims of innocence and piety are pure vanity and wicked to the core. You should be punished more. How much more punishment could be poured out upon Job's suffering head? His friends add insult to his misfortune. The only further punishment would be death, which by now Job is pleading for.
Zophar is a cold disassociated cynic. His tone is high and aloof, making him appear intellectual. He has no heart for Job. He delights in the witty jest that cuts to bone. Zophar speaks to his friend has if he were a serial killer. “One of the great crimes of the intellectual philosophy is that it destroys a man as a human being and turns him into a supercilious spectator; he cuts himself off from relationship with human stuff as it is and becomes a statue” (Chambers 1990, 125).
“Canst thou by searching find out God” (11:7)? Zophar intends this as a rebuke. What God is doing is beyond Job's comprehension. God wants Job to trust in Him, even if it seems thoroughly ridiculous. As Adam and Eve rejected the ‘Life’ (the Spirit) for the ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’ (the Soul), so Job, by trying to understand his situation, is refusing to trust in God. He will not see this until the Lord Himself explains it in chapters 40 & 41. By trusting in God, unconditionally, as did Christ Jesus, Job could take a giant step back from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Job can never know all that God is doing. The desire to know, opens the path to doubt, to second guessing, and to the contentiousness that is Job at this moment. If Job understands that he cannot know everything that God is doing, he is freed to wait for God. Many commentators, Maimonides, chief among them, suggest that the whole point of the story is to bring Job to the understanding that some things are beyond his understanding.
There is another dimension. Job will soon demand a face to face with God. This is not so wise. God tells Moses, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exod. 33:20). Zophar is not meaning this specifically, but is referring to Job's impudent attitude. Zophar, a self-absorbed intellect, is not one to talk, but those traits most like our own bad traits tend to irritate us the most; and so Zophar spies the monster within the depths of Job and puts his finger on it. ‘Who do you think you are to demand knowledge of God?’
The counter-point to this, and why Zophar's condemnation is blatantly misguided, we are instructed to seek God. “But if from thence thou shalt seek the LORD thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God)” (Deut. 4:29-31). Does “with all thy heart” put a large caveat in this statement? Yes, I think so. Job is suffering from just this. He is punching at the air, but he is scattered. One minute he is defending his pride and his dignity, another questioning his fate, and another asking God for answers. He is double minded. On the one hand, Job wants to be chief of God's ways, but on the other he wants to be chief of man's ways. He has yet to see that the two are mutually exclusive. He must turn and clearly focus on God, which he is not yet ready to do: “if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matt. 6:22; Luke 11:34). “Evil men understand not judgment: but they that seek the LORD understand all things” (Prov. 28:5).
Barnes notes, “The sentiment is expressed in a most beautiful manner; and the language itself is not unworthy of the theme. The word “searching,” ‘chêqer’, is from ‘châqar’ to search, to search out, to examine; and the primary sense, according to Gesenius, lies in searching in the earth by boring or digging–as for metals. Then it means to search with diligence and care. Here it means that by the utmost attention in examining the works of God, it would be impossible for man to find out the Almighty to perfection” (Barnes, note on 11:7). This is an opening on an important theme: wisdom. Job will compare the search for wisdom to digging for precious metals and stones in chapter 28.
Zophar gets lost in his allusion that by digging for the knowledge of God you waste your time. “Who can hinder him?” (11:10), he asks. Zophar suddenly turns the discussion from seeking God to God searching us, seemingly suggesting that God is playing a cat and mouse game. God surely sees the wickedness that Job, so he assumes, is hiding: “For He knows false men, And He sees iniquity without investigating” (11:11, NASB). All your wisdom is pure vanity, for you will not find the knowledge you seek. Zophar cannot resist the opportunity left when Job suggested he had been driven out like a wild ass and drops a wicked insult: “an idiot will become intelligent, when the foal of a wild donkey is born a man” (11:12, NASB). Job will respond in the next chapter: “I am a joke to my friends” (12:4, NASB).
‘Repent and all this torment will end’, pleads Zophar (11:13-19). “If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles” (11:14). As with Eliphaz and Bildad, Zophar includes a description of all the good that will come to Job if would only repent. “Thou shalt dig about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety” (11:18). The allusion is somewhat unclear to us. It likely refers to making a fortification about oneself, either earth mounds or a protective pit. It could also refer to digging to create smoothed fields for pastures and farms (Isaiah 7:25) or digging to fertilize (Luke 13:8). But I particularly like this reference in Isaiah, “Ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged” (Isa. 51:1). From this root in Abraham is your strength.
The three friends will continue to dig for Job's secret sin until they are frustrated into silence (32:1). Failing to gain Job's repentance, Zophar summarizes, “the eyes of the wicked shall fail, and they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost” (11:20). Job will ignore Zophar and battle his torment in his own way until God is able to make it clear to him. The beating that Job is taking from his friends is becoming monotonous. Job is entirely discounted. He must be guilty, according to them, and therefore he is both guilty and stubbornly unrepentant. On Job's part, he is frustrated and miserable. His friends are making things worse, not better. As we saw before, Job is wearing down. He answers Zophar with a high degree of sarcasm.
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