The starting point of moral wisdom is recognizing our minds are not equal to the task. When we understand the fullness of our fallen condition, we realize we cannot know the nature of things nor all the factors in any given context. Even if we did know all those things, we still could not reason our way to a blameless response. The birth place of moral failure is the arrogance of human reason. Job’s friends have already shown their adherence to a false orthodoxy, a concept of sin and wrath that is contrary to revelation. It was the same failed orthodoxy of Hellenized Judaism and is a critical element in the heresy of Prosperity Gospel. To assume a simplified binary logic regarding human suffering is a rejection of God’s revelation. God punishes sin, of a certainty, but not necessarily in ways we expect and not on our scale of timing and justice. The presence of suffering is not simply a failure of faith and righteousness. If you can’t understand that God can bring suffering with righteousness, then you are not paying attention.
Zophar is downright hateful with Job. He opens by calling Job a windbag, and then misquotes him and creates a serious Straw Man fallacy. Job did not say his doctrine was pure, nor did he arrogantly accuse God of doing wrong. Zophar is convinced that if God did speak, He would openly condemn Job and reveal that secret sin he must surely be hiding by his empty words.
While Zophar correctly speaks of God’s transcendence, it is his own arrogance of human reason that bears the rebuke here. He insists Job can only be falsely accusing God of injustice, since God cannot in Zophar’s feeble logic bring sorrow for mysterious reasons. In his mind, God can take only one path to judge sin, and that His wrath must of necessity be easily understood by man. So he refers to the untamed wild nature of fallen mankind as if that applies to Job, while rejecting the notion a man can sin with his thoughts. The rejection of ineffable truth beyond human reason, the assurance that there is so much man could not ever know, even in theory, is the primary reason so many refuse revelation. This is a tacit rejection of the Fall.
Once again, Zophar affirms the empty promise that if Job repents God cannot help but restore all that Job lost. For Zophar, the words of prophecy make God out to be a vending machine — pay your dues, push the right buttons and it always works. He rejects the notion life is experienced more like a slot machine, that you never know what’s coming because God and His ways cannot be contained in human understanding. Thus, the three visitors of Job reduce God’s glory to mere mechanics.
