“If you prepare your heart, you will stretch out your hands toward him.
Zophar turns from God's greatness to a condition. Set your heart right, reach out to God, and everything will change. The words sound wise, and in part they are. But they rest on an assumption about Job that the commentators say was false.
Where the Verse Sits in Zophar's Speech
Zophar's address moves through a fixed shape, and verse 13 opens its fourth movement. One writer lays out the outline: Job's flood of words rebuked (vv. 1-6), the greatness of God (vv. 7-9), all things open to Him (vv. 10-12), then this:
Samuel Ridout(4) The call to repent (vv. 13-15). (5) The peaceable results (vv. 16-20).
Everything Zophar has said about God's greatness now bends toward one purpose. He presses Job to repent as a guilty man. The same writer notes what that costs him:
Samuel RidoutZophar spoils the dignity of what he had just said. He calls on Job to repent as an evildoer with a store of ill-gotten wealth in his tents. This complete lack of discernment stirs Job to anger. It shows up the shallow nature of the friends' theory.
Advice That Was Right in Itself
One commentator weighs the advice apart from the man who gave it:
William Kelly"If you prepare your heart, and stretch out your hands toward Him." Now that was excellent advice. That was just what Job did need — to wait on God until God gave him the answer as to how all this had come upon him. But Zophar's idea was all wrong.
(Kelly quotes an older translation, which reads both halves of the verse as conditions.)
The two actions in the verse are prayer and turning back. Zophar holds them out as Job's one way out of trouble:
William KellyFinally, Zophar urges supplication and repentance as the only door of escape for Job, but a sure opening into a bright and prosperous and secure life, if he would avoid the certain doom of the wicked.
The Wrong Diagnosis
The trouble is the sentence Zophar attaches next, about iniquity in the hand. He treats Job as a man clutching secret sins. But the commentators say Job's real problem lay somewhere else entirely:
William Kelly"If iniquity is in your hand" — that was not what it was. It was not a question of iniquity, but of God dealing with Job's satisfaction with himself. Job was a truly godly, God-fearing man, but he had a high idea of his own character. That is what no soul should ever allow. It is completely wrong for a person to rest in himself, no matter how blameless he may be, and no matter how truly he waits on God day by day. There is no rest in any creature, least of all in ourselves.
So Zophar offered a real cure for an illness Job did not have. Another writer puts the failure in medical terms:
Leslie M. GrantZophar thought he was giving Job the remedy for his depressed condition. But his diagnosis was totally wrong, so his remedy was not what Job needed.
The Question Zophar Cannot Answer
One commentator starts with Zophar's view of God. Then he asks what happens to a man who tries to prepare his heart and cannot:
C. H. MackintoshThese words have a strong flavour of law. They prove very clearly that Zophar had no right sense of God's character. He did not know God. God is not against us, but for us. He is not someone who demands, but someone who gives freely. Zophar says, "If you prepare your heart." But if not, what then? No doubt a man ought to prepare his heart, and if he were right he would. But then he is not right, and so when he sets about preparing his heart, he finds nothing there but evil. He finds himself completely powerless. What is he to do? Zophar cannot tell.
Another writer names this way of thinking, and turns it on the reader:
C StanleyHe can tell Job that if Job were not a sinner, then all would be most blessed with him. That is all that Zophar, or mere human light, can do. This is human religion. I must try not to be a sinner, and then I shall be happy, and God will not be against me. Still a hopeless effort — don't you find it so? You are a sinner. How then can you stand before a holy Judge? There is the difficulty.
True Words Without the Truth
One writer sums up where all three friends failed:
C. H. MackintoshThey did not know how to present God to Job; and, as a result, they did not know how to lead Job's conscience into the presence of God. Instead of leading him to self-judgment, they only fed a spirit of self-vindication. They did not bring God into the scene. They said some true things, but they did not have the truth.
Summary
- The counsel is good. Preparing the heart and reaching out to God is what Job needed. He had to wait until God answered him.
- The assumption is false. Zophar reads Job as an evildoer hiding stolen goods in his tents. That lack of discernment stirs Job to anger.
- The diagnosis misses. Job's problem was not sin in his hand but satisfaction with himself. Zophar aimed a real remedy at the wrong illness.
- The condition has no answer. "If you prepare your heart" — but what if a man tries and finds nothing there but evil, and himself powerless? Zophar cannot say. He never knew that God is not against us, but for us.
- True things are not the truth. The friends never brought God into the scene. So they fed Job's self-defence instead of leading his conscience into God's presence.