Job’s friends is often a derogatory term for people whose attempts to console make a sufferer feel worse.
I’ve been one, I’ve had Job’s friends in my life, and I’ve observed them frequently in the wild.
They mean well but, like so many in our American generation, they don’t really know how to comfort well.
I suspect it’s because they’re afraid.
What do Job’s friends fear?
A lost of control.
Who can blame them?
Fear
Fear visits all of us in many guises.
As a noun: “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”
As a verb: “be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.”
But Job was the one suffering, what was their issue?
In a sense, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite were possibly superstitious–but not deliberately.
If Job’s friends could figure out what Job had done to cause God to treat him so poorly, they could avoid doing the same thing.
Job arguing with his friends about God and suffering By Gerard Seghers. (Wikimedia Commons)
Pretty simple–and isn’t that what most stumbling consolers seem to do?
Even though Job’s exemplary behavior was famous throughout the region, they were convinced he must be hiding a secret sin for which God was punishing him in this over-the-top way.
They knew Job as a godly man–what could he have done to make God treat him so?
Trust
Job’s friends did not know what God was up to in the torments that befell Job. Neither did he.
Their view of God did not match Job’s–they knew he had done something for such catastrophes to fall upon him.
Job, on the other hand, knew his God better, even going so far to announce, “though He slay me, yet I will praise Him.” (Job 13: 15)
He did not know why his family had to suffer such horrors, nor why he had so many sores.
Job’s friends did not comfort; his wife suggested he curse God and die.
Job refused to back away from his conviction God’s hand was on his life and something Job did not understand was at work.
He, of course, was correct.
(God and Satan made a deal described in the opening chapters of the book).
Job’s friends wanted to calm their fears by controlling God.
How often are our behaviors and attitudes toward God motivated by fear?
God shows up
When God arrived after 36 chapters of mourning and debate, He pointed out He:
The Trials of Job by Leonaert Bramer -(Wikimedia Commons)
fed the birds,
put the oceans in their place,
originated the concept of “greenhouse effect,”
and He didn’t need to be scolded by Job and his friends for His decisions.
God chastised Job’s friends for their poor behavior and challenged Job on his attitude, but in the end rewarded Job with a double portion of everything God had allowed Satan to take away.
(We don’t hear in this book what happens to Satan, but those who’ve read through Revelations know God wins).
While Job received back all his possession and more, his ten children were not raised from the dead and that’s why I think this book has a bittersweet ending.
Ten more children were born to Job and his wife; ten children were in heaven with God.
Job and his friend learned the hard way, they could not control God–no matter what fear tactic they used.
What inaccurate understandings about God has fear driven you to presume?
Tweetables:
What is a Job’s comforter and how do they work? Click to tweet.
Fear, control, what else were Job’s friends thinking? Click to tweet.
How to insult God from Job’s friends. Click to tweet.
On the other hand, they showed up. They sat in silence with him for 7 days as he grieved.
They did and they should get credit for “sitting shiva.”
Great essay, Michelle. I think you’re right, that a lot of people ‘use’ someone who’s suffering a a sort of talisman to help them avoid the same ‘mistakes’. They may also feel the superstitious pull, in standing by Job (as they see it), of “the closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm”.
But more than anything, I think they’re like the proverbial three blind me describing an elephant. They simply are blinkered to the Big Picture.
I suppose that fear led me to discard the full context of Jeremiah 29:11 and to focus on how it wasn’t playing out in my life; if THIS is God’s plan, and my future, I wanted something to resent, and who better to resent than God?
But I missed certain things; foremost, that Jer 29:11 is directed at a people, not a person. Commentary and supporting Scripture make a case for a personal interpretation, yes. But I wanted an explicitly personal message from it, and not finding one I could put myself on a weirdly ‘higher’ moral plane than God, since he wasn’t following through on His promise.
The other thing I missed was that there are many kinds of blessings, and that I’ve received far more than I wanted to see, even under the present circumstances. This illness has changed my heart, and I’d never want to go back to being the person I was.
That’s a kind of prosperity. The best kind.
You know this better than so many of us, Andrew. It’s not a comfort to know God takes through the fire those He loves, but it’s something.
Job came out a better man before God after his severe testing. In my struggles (no where near as difficult as yours or Job’s), I came out on the other end with Job 2:10.
Here, Job chastises his wife who had just urged him to curse God and die: “But he said to her, “You speak as one of the [spiritually] foolish women speaks [ignorant and oblivious to God’s will]. Shall we indeed accept [only] good from God and not [also] accept adversity and disaster?” In [spite of] all this Job did not sin with [words from] his lips.” [Amplified]
I’ve always felt sorry for Job’s wife. After all, all that he lost, she lost, too. Haven’t many of us in bitterness said or thought something negative about God (as Andrew mentioned above)? I’d like to think she was speaking out of her pain, & eventually found peace with God herself.
Very true.