“Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it.
These words open Job's reply to his three friends. He has already seen and heard everything they are telling him. So if Job knows as much as his comforters do, where can he take his case instead?
Job Answering His Friends on Their Own Ground
Eliphaz had argued from what he had watched happen in the world. Job answers that he has watched the same world:
F. B. HoleEliphaz had based his condemnation of Job on what he himself had observed. Well, Job too had powers of observation. He had seen all these things he had just spoken of, as he says in the opening verses of Job 13. He did not claim to be superior to his friends, but at any rate he was not their inferior. Yet he admitted that God's dealings mystified him. They were far above him and out of his sight.
Familiar Truths Turned Into a Weapon
The friends are not simply wrong. They take what everyone already knows and turn it into evidence against Job. One commentator compares them to doctors who fix the diagnosis first:
Samuel RidoutNext, Job boldly charges his friends with being false witnesses for God. They used well-known truths, familiar to everyone, to back up their charge that Job was wicked. What kind of physicians were they to treat a case like this? They have decided what his disease is, and they misrepresent his symptoms to confirm their diagnosis!
True Things Without the Truth
The friends knew the same facts Job did. That knowledge did not help them reach him:
C. H. MackintoshThey did not know how to present God to Job. 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. They brought in experience, tradition, legality, but not the truth.
That failure does more damage than plain error. A true statement aimed at the wrong person carries God's authority with it:
William KellyAbstract truth is of no use at all to the saints of God. Things that are true, but misunderstood and misapplied, may do more harm than many a thing that is false. Misapplied truth gives the apparent authority of God to an error. That error then carries all the more weight, because it comes as the truth. If someone says a foolish thing, or one that is clearly false, people dismiss it; but no believer can brush aside the truth of God.
Knowledge That Could Not Find God
Job has matched his friends point for point. Now he asks for someone else to hear him — God Himself:
William KellyBut now he says (Job 13), "Behold, my eye has seen all this" — you have been boasting of what the ancients all thought — "my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God." That is just what he was doing. But how? He did not know. There was no New Testament yet. There was no One to stand between God and man, as Christ does. So he did not know how to get to Him. If he could only find Him; if he could only be before Him! He knew very well what he would find there — a faithful God.
From Hearing About God to Seeing Him
Here Job's ear has heard. By the end of the book his eye has seen, and that change is what the suffering gained him:
F. B. HoleA greater knowledge of God Himself enriched Job, for he said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." In these words he contrasted two kinds of knowledge. His former knowledge had been by report only. What he had now gained came by direct sight. He had, if we may put it this way, exchanged second-hand knowledge for knowledge of a first-hand kind. Before, he knew about Him; now he knew Him.
One writer reads Job's long argument as the thing that held this off. Job's own mind kept working instead of waiting:
G. V. WigramJob did look up. But his own mind was at work inside him. Instead of waiting for God to come in and explain everything, Job put himself on show and prolonged the furnace and the trial. But God did come in, and Job learned.
Summary
- Heard — Job had seen and heard it all already. His friends' speeches told him nothing new.
- Familiar — they took truths everyone knew and bent them into proof of Job's guilt. They were doctors fitting the symptoms to a diagnosis already chosen.
- Misapplied — a true statement aimed at the wrong case does more damage than a plain lie. It borrows God's authority for an error.
- Unreached — knowing about God gave Job no way to Him. He wanted to speak to the Almighty, and no one yet stood between God and man.
- Seen — the trial ended when hearing became sight. Second-hand report gave way to knowing God Himself.