Job 12:5

Zophar spoke with such extreme certainty that it no doubt prompted Job to begin his reply on a very sarcastic note. His words, "No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you," have almost become a proverb, used against the man whose self-conceit makes him sure he is right. He claimed to have understanding equal to his friends. In verse 5 he reminded them that he stood in this slippery place, shining like a warning lamp, while men in easy and comfortable circumstances — his friends — despised him.

Job felt the sadness of it. His friends mocked and ridiculed him, though he was just and blameless (v.4). He had been a lamp, giving light. Now these friends, comfortably at ease, despised him in their thoughts. They were ready to put down those whose feet slip.

They were all at ease, these three men. Nothing was the matter with them. They had not, like Job, been taken up by God, who then let the devil do all the evil he could. "He who is ready to slip with his feet" — that is what Job felt he was — "is like a lamp despised in the thought of the man who is at ease." Why? A lamp needs to be held steady. If a man is slipping with his feet, what good is his lamp? It waves about and sinks down into the mud. But they were all at ease, sitting in judgment on him.

You mock me; I am nothing but a laughingstock. You as my neighbours come to me and say, "He calls on God, that He should answer him." Yet I am the just, the perfect man; you make sport of me. You are at ease and treat the one who is down, overwhelmed by misfortune, with contempt.

They are at ease, while nursing unjust suspicions of him. He almost compares them to robbers, who keep their loot undisturbed.

Friends should show pity to a sufferer. That is a basic principle. Otherwise, under the stress of trial — as some have translated it — "he should forsake the fear of the Almighty." … But the hard principle these friends were applying knew no mercy and felt no sympathy. In his hour of desperate need they proved completely unfit to be friends. They are not the "brother born for adversity." … Yet he had asked nothing unreasonable of them — no money, no rescue from the enemy, only a little sympathy.

We deceive ourselves if we think we must be right when we grieve those whom God is disciplining. This is often very far from being the case. The Lord said in Zechariah, "I am very angry with the nations that are at ease; I was only a little angry, and they made the affliction worse." … We are more often, perhaps, in God's mind, and acting as living vessels of the Spirit, when we comfort such people. And I am sure it was so in Job's case. Had his former friends known God's way, they would have dealt very differently with him.