NOTES for Job 12:1-25

In answering Zophar, Job cannot restrain his biting irony. He makes a show of praising his friends' unsurpassed wisdom. He himself produces a whole collection of commonplaces from the writings of the sages, which are just as true and indisputable as those his friends have offered him, and just as useless. Job has no doubts about God's wisdom and omnipotence. What is there to argue about?

But in Job's eyes all this loses its value in the face of a simple and obvious fact: the suffering of an innocent, righteous person. Job goes further still: he is ready to testify to a tendency characteristic of the fallen world, indeed to something like a rule: the righteous do not prosper in this world. And this calls the value of the entire world order into question. Who needs a world where there is no justice? What right does such a world have to exist before God, if God really is a just Judge? And if God's wisdom allows evil to exist in the world not as a punishment for a sinner, but simply, so to speak, for the sake of balance within the harmony of the world, there can scarcely be anything more nightmarish for a human being than such wisdom.

For in that case it turns out that a human being matters no more to God than a grain of sand. One can be righteous or sinful as one pleases, as the saying goes, but it makes no difference to God. This means losing not only one's moral bearings, but one's metaphysical bearings as well. The Torah has always confronted human beings with the choice of a path. But a path only makes sense if God has laid it out for humanity. And if people lay out all their paths themselves, then all those paths are alike.

It means that God is indifferent to which path a person takes. It means that all paths are equally illusory, and there is no true Way in the world. Then not only righteousness but human life itself is meaningless. Yet none of Job's friends seems to understand this. They remain within the bounds of their own religiosity. From there, the problem cannot be seen. But for Job, whose religious world has collapsed, it is already becoming visible in all its fullness and terrifying clarity.

Answering the accusations of his friends, Job himself resorts to irony on the edge of sarcasm (vv. 1-3). His reply begins with a glorification of the greatness, power, and wisdom of God, for whom nothing is impossible (vv. 7-25). Such a hymn to God would be close and understandable to any religious person. But the magnificence of this hymn is nullified by the mention of the righteous man who has become a laughingstock to people, and of the triumph of robbers who prosper and do not fear God (vv. 4-6). Of course, no one would argue that world harmony is beautiful. And the world created by God is beautiful too. But what is the price of this beauty? Is it not too high? Following the picture Job paints, one must admit that the suffering of the righteous person and the prosperity of the robber are integral elements of world harmony.

It must be noted that such a view has been characteristic of religious consciousness in every age. In fact, Zophar, when he asserts that God knows better whom, when, and how to judge, expresses the same thought. Indeed, if the day of judgment for the wicked person has not yet come, if God delays for now, then this delay belongs to His design for the destinies of the world. But then one will inevitably have to admit that evil too belongs within them, so that God, even if He is not Himself the source of evil, nevertheless permits it into His creation and gives it a place in His world. And this at once devalues all righteousness and makes the life of all righteous people meaningless. If the paths of good and evil are not mutually exclusive, if evil is not the antipode of good but its alternative, even if only a temporary one, righteousness becomes both impossible and unnecessary.

Job, it appears, understands this perfectly well. He sees the beauty of God's world no worse than his friends do, but he cannot accept that this beauty should be achieved at the price of allowing evil into the world. If God is like this, if He is ready to put up with the sufferings of the righteous and the prosperity of robbers, even temporarily, then He is not the God of the righteous. Of course, one could, like Job's friends, rely on the hope that the suffering of the righteous, like the triumph of the wicked, is temporary. But God has no time, and if evil has any meaning at all for Him, then it also becomes part of His eternity. That is why Job experiences so deeply this triumph of robbers and the humiliation of the righteous, even if temporary. His time on earth is coming to an end, and he wants an answer to the main question.

This is how Job feels after his friends' exhortations. He is insulted, he tries to defend his own dignity, and his sarcasm falls on his advisers. We habitually call them "Job's friends," although they do not treat Job in a friendly way. If before their admonitions Job had been ready, with peace in his soul, to endure any trials ("Shall we receive the good from God, and shall we not receive the evil?" (Job 2:10)), then after their "well-meaning" exhortations, protest against God grows stronger in Job's heart. This often happens in our own day as well, when a pious preacher, admonishing others with ignorant tactlessness, pushes people away from faith. After all, the friends do not ask Job the question: what do you yourself think, why did all this happen to you? They "know how things ought to be," and therefore they want to teach, not listen.

Meanwhile, the friends could have refrained from telling Job about the greatness and incomprehensibility of the Creator. He not only knows this himself, but also has the right to remind them that he is the person who called upon God, and to whom He answered. Job has experience of communion with God; no such experience is mentioned of his friends. Their correct words do not correspond to inner experience.