Oh that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!
Job has just called his three visitors forgers of lies and worthless physicians. Now he tells them the kindest thing they could do is stop talking. When a friend is suffering and we cannot explain why, does our talking help him or hurt him?
Physicians who made the wound worse
The picture behind Job's words is a sickbed. Men came to treat a case they had already decided, and the treatment made things worse.
William Kelly"You are all physicians of no value." 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. No balm have you poured on the poor sufferer.
Job wanted something else from them, and he kept pressing his request through the chapter.
F. B. HoleStill, there his friends were, and by this time they had goaded Job into sharper retorts. What he wanted was truth for his mind and healing for his body. He advised them to keep quiet and listen to what he had to say, and he kept on in this way up to verse 13.
A diagnosis that bent the evidence
The charge in verse 4 is not that the friends said false things about God in general. They said true things and used them wrongly.
Samuel RidoutJob boldly charges his friends with being false witnesses for God. They used truths everyone knew 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. 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! Poor Job — he is the victim of the same false theory, and is in danger of blasphemously charging God with injustice.
Why silence would have been wisdom
Job ties their silence to wisdom. One writer reads this as a rule for anyone, not just a jab at three men.
William Kelly"Oh that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!" And it often is a man's wisdom when he sits quiet and holds his tongue. But the moment he begins to speak about what he does not understand — well, what then? That is exactly where they were.
Speaking for God without being sent
Job's next move is to warn them. Claiming to defend God is a serious business, and the One being defended is watching.
Leslie M. GrantThey 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. 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.
Talk that only enlarged the quarrel
Their words did not close the case. They opened it wider, and one writer draws a caution from it.
C. H. MackintoshThe three friends failed to convince Job. Their ministry was one-sided. Instead of silencing Job, they only led him out into a field of discussion that seemed almost boundless. He gives them word for word, and far more… No doubt the friends were wrong, quite wrong. But their being wrong did not make Job right. If Job's conscience had been in the presence of God, he would have made no reply to his friends, even if they had been a thousand times more mistaken and severe.
Where Job takes his case instead
Cut off from human help, Job looks past the three men in front of him.
F. B. HoleJob did not claim to be better than his friends, but he was not below them either. Still, he admitted that God's dealings puzzled him. They were far above him and out of his sight. So, as verse 3 shows, what he wanted was to speak to the Almighty and reason with God, instead of spending his time reasoning with his friends.
Getting to God was the problem.
William KellyBut how could he reach God? He did not know. There was no New Testament yet. There was not One to stand between God and man, like Christ. So he did not know how to get at Him. Yet he knew very well what he would find there — a faithful God.
Summary
- Wound. They came as healers to a suffering man, and poured poison on his wounds instead of oil and balm — no comfort, no cure.
- Diagnosis. They had settled what his disease was. Then they bent his symptoms to fit it, using true statements to prove a false charge. Job was caught in the same false theory.
- Presumption. They argued as if they spoke for God, but He had not sent them. Job warns that God would search them out and rebuke them.
- Silence. It is often a man's wisdom to sit quiet and hold his tongue. The danger starts the moment he speaks about what he does not understand.
- Result. Their talk never silenced Job. It drew him into an endless argument and drove him past his friends to lay his case before God. Yet their being wrong did not make Job right.