If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents.
Zophar tells Job what to do: clean your hands, clear your home, and your suffering will lift. The advice is sound. But he aims it at a man who has done nothing to deserve it. So what is good advice worth when it rests on a false charge?
Where the counsel comes from
Job's three visitors each argue from a different base. This verse is the clearest window into Zophar's. One writer sorts them by the ground each man stands on:
Morrish Bible DictionaryIn short, Eliphaz went by personal experience. He said, "As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same" (Job 4:8). Bildad is the voice of tradition and the authority of the past. He said, "Inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out" (Job 8:8). Zophar displayed law and religiousness. He said, "If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away … then you will lift up your face without blemish" (Job 11:14-15).
Sound advice, wrong man
The instruction is not wrong. What is wrong is the picture of Job it takes for granted — a man with sin gripped in his fist, refusing to let go.
F. B. HoleZophar's closing words of counsel (verses 13-20) also have truth in them. One translation renders verse 14, "If you put far away the iniquity which is in your hand." That is, he again assumes, as the others do, that Job is an evil man after all, holding tight to his sins. Here he was wrong. His counsel to put away evil and turn to God was good, and his description of the happy result was correct enough.
The real issue God was after
If iniquity in the hand was never Job's problem, what was God dealing with? One writer names it:
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 devout, 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. That holds 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.
The insult hidden in "your tents"
Zophar widens the charge from Job's hand to his tents. Now it is not a general call to repent. It is a claim about how Job got his wealth, and that is what breaks his patience.
Samuel RidoutBut Zophar spoils the dignity of what he has 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 discrimination stirs Job to anger. It exposes how shallow the friends' theory is.
The "if" that has no answer
The verse hangs on an "if". Zophar builds his whole speech that way: do this, and then that will follow. The "if" shows what he thinks God is like. It also collapses as soon as a man tries to meet it.
C. H. MackintoshThese words have a strong flavour of legality. They prove very clearly that Zophar had no right sense of God's character. He did not know God. No one with a true knowledge of God could speak of Him as opening His lips against a poor afflicted sinner. Nor could such a person say He demands anything from a needy, helpless creature. God is not against us, but for us, blessed be His Name for ever! He is not a stern collector of debts, but a generous giver. Then Zophar says, "If you prepare your heart." But if not, what then? A man ought to prepare his heart, but he is not right. 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.
The same writer draws the line that separates accurate statements from help:
C. H. MackintoshThey only darkened counsel with words without knowledge. Not one of the three friends understood Job. What is more, they did not know God's character or His purpose in dealing with His dear servant. … Instead of leading him to self-judgment, they only fed a spirit of self-defence. They did not bring God into the scene. They said some true things; but they did not have the truth.
Summary
- True things. Zophar's call to put evil away and turn to God is good advice. The fault is not in the words but in who he aims them at.
- True things, wrong man. He assumes Job is holding tight to his sins and storing wealth he gained wrongly. The assumption is false, and it pushes Job into self-defence instead of self-judgment.
- True things, wrong God. Zophar builds everything on "if you do this, then". That presents God as a stern collector of debts, not a generous giver. It leaves a helpless man with no answer.
- True things, wrong problem. God was not dealing with iniquity in Job's hand. He was dealing with Job's satisfaction with himself. No one, however blameless, may rest in himself.
- True things are not the truth. Statements can be accurate and still darken counsel. The test is whether they bring God into the scene.