NOTES for Job 11:1-20
The sharper the questions Job asks God, the more frightened his friends become. The third of Job's friends taking part in the conversation, Zophar, in fact directly accuses Job of wickedness and almost of blasphemy. For him all of Job's questions and all his turmoil are only empty talk (vv. 1-3). Such a reaction may seem like ordinary contempt, but if so, this contempt is apparently conditioned by the same religious fear that determines the behavior of Job's other two friends. In fact, the questions Job asks can prove destructive for religious consciousness if only a religious person tries to give them an honest answer, because precisely one distinguishing feature of religious consciousness is a very cautious attitude toward any experience of direct revelation.
This, of course, is more characteristic of pagan religiosity, but even a religion that has grown on the foundation of revelation still remains religion in a certain respect and therefore presupposes the presence of a certain distance between a person and God, a kind of "safe distance" that may be reduced only in an extreme case. But Job wants precisely to meet God face to face. It is no wonder that this frightens Zophar, as it frightens Job's other two friends. Realizing that he cannot answer Job's question on the merits, Zophar tries to deprive it of meaning. He says to Job: are you so sure of your purity? Perhaps you deserve a far heavier punishment than the one that has now fallen on you. Has God, out of mercy, perhaps hidden something more from you (vv. 4-6)?
Of course, this is not at all an answer to the question Job has asked. Zophar does not intend to answer; he wants to force Job to be silent, to give up the questions he is asking, and to do so voluntarily. He says to Job: look at who God is and who you are. Can you make yourself equal to Him? Can you know Him? And does He not know better than you whom, when, and how to judge (vv. 7-11)? And, as if failing to notice that Job himself is asking God precisely for a just trial, he says to him: would it not be better for you, without clever evasions, simply to turn to God, having cleansed yourself of all sins? Then everything will be well again (vv. 12-15), and a religious idyll will begin. Prosperity, which the righteous person deserves, will return to him, while the wicked, as is proper for him, will be put to shame (vv. 16-20).