Hardship packs the book of Job. Yet so do plenty and comfort — and I don’t mean only in the bookends of the story. While Job 1:1–5 depicts a materially blessed life, and Job 42:10–17 a materially rebuilt life, other instances of abundance hide between these passages. Where? In the lives of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
Implicit in the book of Job is the reality that God took, and took greatly, from Job but not from his friends. As we’ll see, this detail is one reason (if not the main reason) the three become “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). Throughout our own lives, we too will experience seasons heavy with circumstantial sunshine while others suffer. In the very moments our forecast shows seventy degrees with a breeze, our loved ones may be trekking blindly through a hurricane. How will we respond?
Pride would have us kick up our feet and look down on our friends. Yet Christ would have us seize our sinful gut reactions, pausing instead to pray and wonder: How do we honor God and love others in seasons of material abundance, especially when our blessings contrast starkly with our friends’ trials? Job’s friends teach us what not to say and believe when God takes from others but gives to us.
What Not to Say: ‘I Know Why You Suffer’
With their own lives free from pronounced pain, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar assumed Job’s public sufferings must have stemmed from his private sins. Mere days after Job’s life shattered, Eliphaz went so far as to tell the agonized, ash-shodden man, “Who that was innocent ever perished?” (Job 4:7). In other words: “I know why you suffer: because you sin.”
Surely, God does discipline our spirits through physical trials (Psalm 119:71). But just as surely, “he does not deal with us according to our sins” (Psalm 103:10). Tally sheets don’t sit at the Father’s right hand; the Son does. And this Son, the one and only innocent Man, did perish — that we might ever live. For anyone in Christ, suffering does not scream, “Condemnation!” Suffering sings of a Father who “disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6), making us more like the only perfect Son (Philippians 3:10).
So, no, Eliphaz did not know why Job suffered. He wasn’t in heaven’s throne room as Satan selected a new saint to harass. Had he been, he would have heard the Father’s response: “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8). The Lord knew Job’s faith was in the Lord, not in the life the Lord had given Job. Eliphaz couldn’t have been more wrong about the backdrop of Job’s sufferings. Job suffered not as punishment for his sins but because of his righteousness, to highlight God’s glory.
When our own friends ache, few among us speak as sharply as Eliphaz. Yet our questions and side comments can express the same sentiment — namely, that we know (or can figure out) why a person suffers. Sometimes, we root our explanations in the physical. After each of my three miscarriages, well-meaning loved ones tried to connect enough health-dots to prevent future losses. Did I drink too much caffeine? Was I underweight? Perhaps I needed to rest more and work less while trying to get pregnant. Other times, they rationalized our babies’ deaths with the spiritual: God knew our family’s stress levels couldn’t handle another child right now. He wanted to give us a bigger age gap.
The people who played doctor did more harm than the people who said only, “I’m so sorry,” or, “Lord, have mercy,” as they hugged me. I don’t begrudge the doctors: Many times, I’ve tried to analyze my own friends’ wounds and wounded their hearts in the process.
By God’s design, humans are meaning-makers. We see animals in cloud formations; we hear stories in creaking floorboards. But also by God’s design, suffering is a reality to which we can’t stomp a perfect rhythm — for now (1 Corinthians 13:12). In heaven we’ll marvel at how all the shrill notes in our life’s song actually worked to make the song beautiful (Romans 8:28). As we wait for that day, we do well to watch ourselves. Are we pridefully trying to make complete sense of human pain? In what ways do we foolishly say to our friends, “I know why you suffer”?
What Not to Believe: ‘I Earned My Ease’
Remember how Eliphaz said, “Who that was innocent ever perished?” (Job 4:7)? Well, a wrongful belief hides behind his wrongful statement: “Don’t you see, Job? I am not perishing because I am innocent.”
Our hearts are not so different. Imagine the moment when, at the office, a coworker lets you in on her divorce. Or during community group, when a church member asks you to pray for his prodigal child. Or on your phone, when the text rolls in: a beloved cousin with cancer, an old classmate without a job, a childhood friend overwhelmed by parenting. In each situation, Satan angles for one unspoken reaction from us: “I’m not in that situation because . . .”
“I married a godly man.”
“I homeschooled.”
“I took care of my body.”
“I chose a wise career path.”
“I stay home with my kids.”
Like Job’s miserable comforters, we wrongfully believe we have earned our ease, and our friends their troubles. Eliphaz later says, “Affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground” (Job 5:6). We may refrain from speaking like him, but we take pleasure in thinking like him. Our flesh loves to feel in control. So we pinpoint what we’ve done differently — better — than our suffering friends. We applaud our life decisions and esteem ourselves for our pleasant life outcomes. All the while, just like Eliphaz, we anger our Maker:
The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7–8)
Sometimes, to be sure, godly life decisions guard us against certain kinds of suffering. A patient person is less likely to experience rampant relational trouble, for example. But godliness does not guarantee pleasant circumstances (as the life of our Lord shows). And even if we can trace part of our peace to our character, we have nothing to boast about. We are who we are by grace alone.
We, too, do not speak of God what is right when we say we know why another suffers, believing ourselves responsible for seasons of plenty. All such boasting is more than wrong. “All such boasting is evil” (James 4:16). The blood of bulls, rams, and Christ has been shed for our sinful reactions to others’ trials.
Blessed Be His Name
The lesson is deeply personal. Right now, I’m not in a season of pregnancy loss; I’m in my third trimester, nearing delivery. Yet friends are losing babies left and right. Whom will I credit for the presence of an unborn child: myself or God? As I interact with mothers in pain, will my words bandage or deepen the wound? May the ways we respond to our own blessings, and our friends’ losses, help us all to say,
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
Desiring God