Job 13:6

"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. "Hear now my argument, and listen to the pleadings of my lips. Will you speak falsely for God and speak deceitfully for Him?" That is what they had been doing. They pretended this was for God.

It was with God he wished to speak, not with such quacks as they, whose wisdom would be to hold their peace. What they had said, he counted as spoken wickedly and deceitfully for God. God had given them no such authority, and He would surely reprove them — as in fact He did.

He was seeking to reason and to plead with them, but they were not listening. Instead 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.

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 accept one that stamps wickedness and hypocrisy on Job? Of him God Himself had said, "There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil." Can He let so monstrous a theory of suffering pass? These men had worked it out this way: suffering is always the unerring finger pointing at wickedness. That it is all in anger? What then becomes of His testing of His own, and of the sanctifying effect of discipline?

Job boldly charges his friends with being false witnesses for God... They presume to lie for God! For are they not falsely accusing an innocent man? Are they not afraid to trifle with truth, and will God not deal with them? — for they are only men. Poor Job, he is the victim of the same false theory, and is in danger of blasphemy — of charging God with injustice. He seems to feel his danger, but he must speak; so he turns from man's unjust guesses to God.

Their ear was not open... But the three friends! — they first kept this dead and distressing silence toward Job. He soon had to learn, with much bitterness, what came out of that silence. Though he began, they followed; but it was their own thoughts and not the mind of God.