Job 20:3

Job's triumphant tone stirred up Zophar's hasty, self-confident spirit. It also brought him deep shame, because he thought his friends had not deserved such a reproachful rebuke. So he was burning to speak and reply. He mistook an urge he could not hold back for a supply of solid matter. Yet in the case before him, his words were no more than his own "thoughts," true to his usual self-centredness.

Verses 1-3. Zophar begins his reply to Job with impatient haste. Job's words, probably those found in chapter 19:2-3 and the last two verses, have made him angry. He boils over with indignation. He is ready now to confirm the testimony already given and wound the suffering servant of God still more.

He is not the first man to mistake heat for argument. His haste to pour out his feelings shows poor thinking, not the weight of truth. Job's past answers lead him to expect reproach, and he seems ready for it. But his knowledge drives him to make one more try at silencing Job. As a matter of fact, wounded pride may be the real reason for his eagerness to speak.

It is clear that he was deeply stirred, not by the Spirit of God, but by his own misguided thoughts (v.2). He had heard Job's rebuke that was a reproach to Zophar, but makes it clear that he will accept no rebuke. He fights back with "the spirit of his understanding" (v.3), not by the Spirit of God.

Zophar dismissed what was plain to the eyes of some people, and he was not interested in what those before him had taught. He thought he was clever enough to solve this problem himself, as he said, "the spirit of my understanding causes me to answer." We suggest that he preferred to use his own wisdom — what people call intuition. Eliphaz used his eyes; Bildad used his ears; and Zophar used his brains. Not one of them found the solution to this problem by human wisdom, however they gained it... Did not our Lord say, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children" (Matt. 11:25). How content we are to be in the position of children, quite ready to listen to what God Himself would tell us of these things.

Zophar claimed that history backed up what he knew by intuition — what had happened "of old, since man was placed upon earth." Read Job 20 and you can see the hint that lay under his statements about various acts of wickedness: he was suggesting that Job had been guilty of them. The fact is that the man who bases his argument on his own intuition is always very dogmatic and cocksure. He has to be, to make up for the lack of outward evidence that would back up his assertions.

We speak rightly only as God controls our thoughts. If we think God's thoughts we shall be able to speak things that are right. But even if we are quick to hear God's thoughts, we shall only speak them when we have first taken them in for ourselves and made them our own. We take them in slowly, and so we should be slow to speak. We have taken in very little of God's mind so far. A healthy sense of that will free us from self-confidence and shallow self-assertion. It is self-confidence that makes people ready to speak at once on any and every matter.