“Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.” II Thessalonians 2:16-17
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” Isaiah 40:1
“…wherefore comfort one another with these words.” I Thessalonians 4:18
It is clear that one of the functions of the gospel is to comfort the Lord’s people in their sorrows. One of the charges of the ministry is to supply the gospel in a comforting way. One of the purposes of the local church or assembly is to comfort one another in times of affliction or mourning.
One of the more memorable phrases that Job uses is when he calls his friends “miserable comforters” during his answer to Eliphaz in chapter 16. “Miserable comforters” is an oxymoron. The Hebrew term amal which is used as “miserable” here is translated in other places as toil, trouble, mischief, misery, and labor. All of these ideas are opposite of what a comforter desires to do; in fact, these are the things that a comforter desires to relieve the afflicted from! Thus, Job records a phenomenon that recurs among religious society far too often: people with the best intentions of comfort and support to afflicted people fall short in execution of those goals.
We can be sure of Job’s friends’ good intentions from the text. When we meet them, they are introduced as Job’s “friends.” Consider the first things they do: “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him [emphasis mine]. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great” (Job 2:11-13). Each time God refers to these three men, He always refers to them as Job’s “friends.” As faulty as their execution and as misguided as their application of philosophy, they were indeed Job’s friends who made an intentional effort to comfort him in his affliction.
Where, then, was the problem? Let’s examine some of their statements to Job:
- Over the course of discussion, Eliphaz moves from an implication of sin to direct accusations against Job. Notice the implication in his first answer to Job: “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off? Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same” (Job 4:7-8). By the time we get to his third and final answer to Job, Eliphaz no longer implies that Job is hiding some iniquity but instead accuses him outright of a variety of sins: “For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought, and stripped the naked of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. But as for the mighty man, he had the earth; and the honourable man dwelt in it. Thou hast sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken” (Job 22:6-9). We know from chapter 1 that Job was not guilty of any such offenses, so Eliphaz is mistaken to attempt explanation of Job’s sufferings by accusing him of wrongdoing. The final charges are false accusations. What miserable attempts at comforting!
- Bildad’s three answers also grow increasingly blunt. His first answer takes the position that God’s judgment is not perverted, and that “If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous” (Job 8:6). He proceeds to make what he presents as a generous offer for Job to repent and be restored. Once we get to his second answer, his language is stronger and more condemning: “this is the place of him that knoweth not God” (Job 18:21). His final answer is concise, harsh, and concludes with the impossibility of man being just with God: “Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?” (Job 25:5-6).
- Zophar only answers twice, but his answers form some of the sharpest opposition to Job and his character. “Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” (Job 11:6). “This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God” (Job 20:29).
One of the most challenging aspects of interpreting the book of Job stems from the fact that many of the statements from Job’s friends are nominally true but grossly misapplied. It is true that God punishes the wicked and exalts the humble. It is true that God has dealt with man according to mercy and that repentance from sin is followed by restoration. However, the view of Job’s friends was too narrow. There are times that men suffer in this world for reasons that are not mere chastisement for a particular sin. There are also times when God forbears the wicked, whose judgment only comes after their death.
The prosperity gospel fails because it confines God to becoming a sort of transactional formula that is controlled by the works of men. The Bible truth is that God is supreme over men and that He operates independently of what men may expect. He is always righteous and wise, but He works for His own glory and governs all levels of creation simultaneously, from individuals to communities to nations and ultimately to the redemption story of His people. He operates outside of the time limitations that we experience. He sends rain on the just and unjust, so the idea that God causes the righteous to prosper without exception and takes away the prosperity of the wicked is too simplistic to properly convey the truth of the God of the Bible. He is just too big for this small doctrine.
The troubling thing about the arguments employed by Job’s friends is the overlap in what we sometimes hear from well-meaning religious people today. Zophar’s statement “God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” is an example of this. It is common for people to make variations of this statement, and in a sense it is true. All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and God is indeed too righteous to fellowship sin. The penalty of sin is death, and any blessing we have from God comes from His grace rather than from merit. It is true that none of us deserve the least of God’s mercies. But this statement stops before the comfort of the gospel! God has redeemed His people from sin! That sin is separated from them as far as the east is from the west! There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus! It is tragic to hold this unbearable weight of sin against the consciences of God’s people without supplying the truth of the solution to sin in Christ. Such an immediate application of this general sin of mankind applied directly to Job was an unfair allegation. In terms of practical conduct and godliness, God Himself declared that Job was righteous. There is no doubt that Job is a child of God, and his friends should have used the opportunity to consider Job’s suggestion of a daysman, mediator, or redeemer rather than saddle Job with a burden of sin that no man can bear. Similarly, our visits to afflicted or grieving people are not appropriate times to pound those people with “your affliction is better than you deserve.” To be good comforters, we must remember that we are speaking to a chosen and justified object of God’s love.
It is interesting and instructive to note that Job’s friends exhibited grand sympathy for Job by sitting with him for 7 days in silence. Can anyone question the sincerity of friends who are simply present in difficult times? Perhaps in considering our own efforts to comfort God’s afflicted people, we could take a theme from the medical field: first, do no harm. Rather than conducting a conversation of condemnation or merciless accusation, we should start from a position of honest sympathy. Afflictions are common to all men, though exact experiences are diverse. If we begin with a willingness to sit together in mourning silence without losing that perspective, we may have opportunity to learn an effective type of conversation for comforting God’s people.