Job 20:25

Does he seek to avoid some weapon of iron? The bow of copper pierces him through. The language is most telling. It is drawn, and at once it comes out of his flesh, the glittering sword out of his gall. Some understand "He is gone! terrors over him," which certainly fits the vivid suddenness of the ruin described. But the older versions are against Rosenmüller, Schultens and others, who take it that way.

He flees from the iron weapon, and the deadlier arrow pierces him: "as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, … and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him" (Amos 5:19). The shaft strikes the vital organs of the terror-stricken man with perfect aim. There is no escape.

"He will flee from an iron weapon" (v.24). This may remind us of Joseph, whose "neck was put in a collar of iron" (Ps. 105:18). The iron speaks of hard, unyielding circumstances. Joseph met them with calm submission, but they made Job want to flee. Most of us are the same: we want to avoid the hardness of trials. One might ask: would Zophar be submissive if an iron weapon threatened him? Or would he want to flee from it? But he was not in Job's situation, and could speak confidently about others. "A bronze bow will pierce him through" — this speaks of the arrow from the bow. So terror pierces him through.

There is an intensity in Zophar that gives a distinct character to his words. He denounces evil with heat, and leaves no room for doubt that he means Job. He describes the certain doom of the wicked in language so forceful that it soon exhausts what he has in mind. This seems to be the reason why he ends all he has to say with this second address. The fiercer the fire, the more quickly it burns out. All that he says is true; his own unpardonable error is that he seeks to apply it to a righteous man.

Zophar has completed his terrible charges. He has pursued without pity a bruised and apparently dying man. He has refused Job's appeal for pity. He has ignored Job's claim of unshaken integrity. He has pressed his suspicion with an iron hand into the soul of the poor sufferer. And all of it comes under the plausible excuse of piety pleading for God! However it may end, we feel that Zophar and those like him are no help at all. And we are not sorry that we shall hear no more from him — until he comes back in a very different spirit, to ask the prayers of the friend he has slandered.

Here then, we see how vital it is that we get the mind of God. Neither experience nor tradition will do. Bildad loved tradition as much as Eliphaz loved experience. But Zophar, I think, was quite confident in himself. And this self-confidence biases a man even more than the other two weaknesses do — thinking too much of the wisdom of old age, or of the tradition of those before us. No, God will have His own word. We honour God when we receive His word and apply it — not just to other people, but above all to ourselves.