Job 2:11

They came from districts noted for men of wisdom: "Is wisdom no more in Teman? Has counsel perished from the prudent? Has their wisdom vanished?" (Jer. 49:7). The "men of the East" had the same reputation. They seem to have been men of personal piety; at least they had a knowledge of the true God and of righteousness. Eliphaz has been defined as "God is strength," and by others, "God is fine gold." Both meanings suggest at least the greatness and supremacy of God. His country, Teman, means "the south," the country lying under the sun, open to the light. But while the south country is open to the light, it tends to be dry and arid. Light without life can never help.

The trouble must have gone on for a long time. We should not think Job's trial lasted only a few days. God set its limit, but that limit need not have been short. His terrible disease came after he lost his property, his family, everything here below. News of it reached friends who lived far away, and so they had to arrange to come together. This alone supposes the lapse of some time.

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were real friends and brothers, though they proved to be only "miserable comforters." They came to Job when everyone else had deserted him. Children mocked him. Young men pushed his feet away. His relatives failed him, his close friends forgot him, and his servants gave him no answer. Even his wife refused him, though he pleaded with her for their children's sake. They were true-hearted friends. They said they would go and comfort their suffering brother. And they did go.

God was soon pleased to bring out what was in his heart in a way man could not expect. He used godly friends to bring to the surface what the adversary had completely failed to reach or see. Their very presence drew out impatience even from the patient Job. God proves our weakness at the very point where we are strongest. In Christ alone we stand.

It does not appear that the friends had spoken a single sentence. They sat in total silence, with torn garments and covered with dust, gazing on a grief too deep for them to reach. It was Job himself who first broke the silence.

Eliphaz the Temanite used his eyes. Bildad the Shuhite used his ears. Zophar the Naamathite used his brain. But all this wisdom was hopeless, dear friends, when it faced this divine problem surrounding this wonderful man Job.

What had his friends done for him during the sifting he was passing through? He had good reason to say, "Miserable comforters are you all." 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 that if God is to deal in blessing with man, it must be wholly on the ground of grace. They did not know how to meet his case. They said many true things, but not one of them was the right thing for Job's case, because they did not understand him.

They might have helped if his case were an ordinary one. But here was a man of outstanding righteousness, stripped of every earthly possession in a way never seen before, and their tongues were silent. They did not understand God's ways with His own people at all. Their false and unworthy suggestions made Job feel how completely unable they were to help him, and threw him back on God Himself. So in the end he said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5).