Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.
Job turns from answering his friends' arguments to weighing what their wisdom is made of. He compares their sayings to burnt-out ash and their defences to soft clay. Can words about God sound right and still be worth nothing?
The words Job uses
Commentators differ over the second half of the verse. One reading makes it the friends' bodies. The other makes it their defence walls.
William KellyTheir memorable sayings were made of ashes, and their defence walls (not "bodies," as the older English version has it) were made of clay. Here was one more reason for them to keep quiet, and to leave him to have it all out with God, however hopeless that looked, and whatever came of it.
You cannot build with ash, and a wall of clay will not hold.
The maxim they were defending
The friends shared one fixed rule about suffering. Every speech they made rested on it.
Samuel RidoutThat principle is that all suffering punishes rather than teaches. It rests on God's justice rather than on His love — though the two are always joined in everything He does. A rule like this cannot tell the difference between what a righteous person suffers and what a wicked person suffers. Followed to its end, as the friends did follow it, it meant that Job was suffering for some sin no one had spotted yet. His only hope of relief was to confess that sin and so get mercy.
Misrepresenting God on God's behalf
The friends spoke to defend God. Job says their defence misrepresented the One it claimed to protect, and one writer agrees with him.
F. B. HoleWhat he wanted was truth for his mind and healing for his body. They were only men who "whitewash with lies," and "worthless physicians." He told them to keep quiet and listen to what he had to say, and he kept this up as far as verse 13. He felt they had talked as though speaking on God's behalf, and in so doing had misrepresented Him. In this, no doubt, Job judged rightly.
The fear that should have stopped them
This verse follows straight after Job asks whether God's majesty does not terrify them. One writer reads the two lines as cause and effect.
Leslie M. GrantJob knew that God does not deceive, as his friends were proving to do. When the time came, God would search them out and rebuke them. Job was of course wondering why God did not step in at once. But he asks them a pointed question: "Will not His majesty terrify you, and the dread of Him fall upon you?" (v.11). Men should dread misrepresenting God, whose glory is so high above the heavens. Therefore Job likens their arguments to ashes and to clay (v.12).
Built from the wrong material
So where did their arguments come from? One writer names the source.
William KellyHe says, "You whitewash with lies." You see, all their arguments rested on man and on the world. Everything a believer stands on is what is in God — what God gives and reveals. And we find it there in full perfection, in Christ. But they were all resting on man's thoughts and man's experience, and things like that.
Job's own danger
Job's charge against them is fair. Yet the same false theory has hold of him too.
Samuel RidoutNext, Job charges his friends outright with being false witnesses for God. They used well-known truths, familiar to everyone, to back up their charge that Job was wicked. What sort of physicians were they to treat a case like this? They have already decided what his disease is, and they twist his symptoms to fit their diagnosis!… Poor Job is the victim of the same false theory, and he is in danger of charging God with injustice, which would be blasphemy.
God's answer to their speeches
Job expected God to deal with them for these speeches.
William KellyHe reckoned they had spoken wickedly and deceitfully on God's behalf. God had given them no such authority, and He would certainly rebuke them — as He did.
Summary
- Material. Ash and clay are the test: sayings that crumble, walls that will not hold. Commentators differ over the second line — bodies, or defence walls.
- Source. They crumble because of their source. The friends built on man's thoughts and man's experience, not on what God gives and reveals.
- Content. Their rule was that suffering is always punishment. Such a rule cannot tell a righteous sufferer from a wicked one.
- Danger. Words spoken for God can misrepresent Him. The dread of His majesty should hold a person back.
- Outcome. Job said God would rebuke them for speaking wickedly on His behalf — and He did. Yet the same false theory held Job too, and it was pushing him toward charging God with injustice.