Job 13:4

He says, "Worthless physicians are you all." You came to heal me. You had heard of my terrible state. You came to heal and cure me in my dreadful sickness and suffering — and what have you done? You have poured poison on my wounds. You have poured no wine, no oil. You have poured no balm on the poor sufferer.

The LORD Himself was the physician of His people Israel, ready at all times to heal and restore them (Jeremiah 8:22). Job, in the bitterness of his soul, found his friends to be physicians of no value. They did not understand his case, and only added to his misery (Job 13:4).

Next, Job boldly charges his friends with being false witnesses for God. They used well-known truths, familiar to everyone, to confirm 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! And they bring in their theory that God always punishes sin in this life, to prove that Job is a sinner!

All their arguments were founded on man and on the world. Everything a believer stands on is what is in God, and what God gives and reveals. And there we find it, in all its perfection, in Christ. But they were resting on man's thoughts and man's experience.

They did not truly understand God's character, so they could not understand His dealings with a soul. They had no proper sense of sin. So they did not know this: if God is to deal in blessing with man, it must be entirely on the ground of grace. They did not know how to meet his case. They had said many true things, yet not one single right thing that applied to Job, because they did not understand him.

They were speaking wickedly on God's behalf, using deceit in claiming to speak for God. Job knew that God was fully aware that the charges of his friends were not true. So God was certainly not backing them up. Job knew that God was not deceitful, as his friends were proving to be. When the time came, God would search them out and would surely rebuke them. … Men should deeply fear to misrepresent God, whose glory is so high above the heavens.

God does not accept honour at the expense of truth. It is His glory that all His attributes blend in one harmonious light. Can He then accept a defence of His character and ways that rests on a false charge? Can He let it brand a man as wicked and hypocritical? Of that same man He Himself had said, "There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil." … What then becomes of His testing of His own, and of the sanctifying effect of chastening?

The LORD speaks to Eliphaz, the leader of the three. He declares His wrath against them all, because they had not spoken of Him what is right, as His servant Job had. And yet their whole argument had apparently been for God's righteousness! Had they not held to this from the very start, with many a noble description and many a fierce condemnation of evil? Had they not fastened the charge of wrongdoing on Job, despite a total lack of proof and against well-known facts to the contrary? Zealous for God's honour — that had been their one theme.