Job 20:4

Zophar does not even consider that Job might not be wicked. He condemns the wicked again in strong terms, and makes it clear he is really speaking of Job. He was stirred up, not by the Spirit of God, but by his own misguided thoughts (v.2). He had heard Job's rebuke, aimed at him, but he 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.

He is not the first man to mistake strong feeling for argument. His haste to pour out his feelings points to poverty of thought, not to the weight of truth.

"Do you not know this from of old, since man was placed on earth" — are you the only man who knows the mind of God? — "that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?" Is that all that Zophar had ever learnt? Did he know nothing of God's dealings with His children here on earth, for their trial and good? Had he no thought of God disciplining us?

He now lays down the fact upon which he rests all he has to say. He declares it a well-known truth, known since man has been on the earth: "The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite, or evil-doer, is but for a moment." There is both truth and error in this statement. Cain was not cut off at once after he murdered his brother. On the contrary, God spared his life, and he settled down in the world with a city and a large family. In the same way, the men before the flood lived on for years, enjoying their pleasures, possessions and inventions. It is so to this day. How often does the wicked seem to prosper, even to old age.

So Zophar keeps to this one point. There is a righteous God above. There are unrighteous, wicked people below. And God always deals with these wicked people now. That was not true. God has always allowed a large part of the world to prosper, to all appearance, in their evil. The reason is that the time of judgment has not yet come.

Of course Job knew this. But Zophar was treating Job's earlier history as the triumphing of the wicked, now cut short by his suffering. His joy being cut short was proof to Zophar that Job was a hypocrite. However, was the triumphing of the wicked always as short as Zophar implied? No. Asaph speaks of this in Psalm 73 when he "saw the prosperity of the wicked" (v.3). They might go through life with no real adversity. But their triumph is cut short at least when they die. Asaph learned this in the sanctuary, as he says, "I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end" (Ps. 73:17).

Here then, we see the all-importance of our getting the mind of God. Neither experience will do, nor tradition. Bildad was as fond of tradition as Eliphaz was of experience. Zophar, I think, was mostly confident in himself. And this self-confidence biases a man even more than the other two weaknesses: thinking too much of the wisdom of old age, or of the tradition of the elders before us. No, God will have His own word. We honour God by receiving His own word and applying it — not just to other people, but above all to ourselves.