Job 11:5

_BUT OH THAT GOD WOULD SPEAK, AND OPEN HIS LIPS AGAINST THEE;_ No JFB commentary on this verse....

1-6 Zophar attacked Job with great vehemence. He represented him as a man that loved to hear himself speak, though he could say nothing to the purpose, and as a man that maintained falsehoods. He desired God would show Job that less punishment was exacted than he deserved. We are ready, with much assurance, to call God to act in our quarrels, and to think that if he would but speak, he would take our part. We ought to leave all disputes to the judgment of God, which we are sure is according to truth; but those are not always right who are most forward to appeal to the Divine judgment....

Verse Job 11:5. _BUT O THAT GOD WOULD SPEAK_] How little feeling, humanity, and charity is there in this prayer!...

BUT OH THAT GOD WOULD SPEAK - Hebrew, “and truly, who will give that God should speak.” It is the expression of an earnest wish that God would address him, and bring him to a proper sense of his ill desert. The meaning is, that if God should speak to him he would by no means find himself so holy as he now claimed to be....

EXPOSITION JOB 11:1 Zophar, the Naamathite, the third of Job's comforters (Job 2:11), and probably the youngest of them, now at last takes the word, and delivers an angry and violent speech. He begins by accusing Job of having spoken at undue length, and at the same time, boastfully and mockingly (verses 2-4). He then expresses a wish that God would take Job at his word, and really answer him, since he is sure that the result would be to show that Job had been punished much less than he. deserved to be (verses 5, 6). Job's complaints against the justice of God's dealings he meets by an assertion of God's unsearchableness and perfect wisdom, which he contrasts with the folly of man (verse 7-12). Finally, he suggests that a stricken man, being guilty, should humble himself, put away hi

BUT O THAT GOD WOULD SPEAK,.... To Job, and stop his mouth, so full of words; convict him of his lies, reprove him for his mocks and scoffs, and make him ashamed of them; refute his false doctrine and oppose it, and show him his folly and vanity in imagining it to be pure, and in conceit thinking himself to be free from sin, and even in the sight of God himself: Zophar seems by this wish to suggest, that what his friends had as yet spoke had had no effect upon Job, and signified nothing; and that he despaired of bringing him to any true sense of himself and his case, but that God only could do it; and therefore he entreats he would take him in hand, and speak unto him; as he had by his providences in afflicting him, so by his spirit in teaching and instructing him; and he adds: AND OPEN HIS LIPS AGAINST THEE; or rather, "with thee", or "to thee" a; converse with thee; speak out his mind...

The words we are about to read were spoken by one of Job's three friends, or what if I call them his three tormentors? These men did not speak wisely, and their argument was not altogether sound; but, for all that, in the instance before us, Zophar the Naamathite spoke that which was truthful. Although he made a great mistake in turning it against Job, yet what he said was in the main correct, and we may learn from it as we read it. Remember, dear friends, that whenever you read the words of these three men, you must take them with a good many grains of salt. They are not to be accepted as if they were God's Word, because they are not. Those three men were mistaken in many points, yet very much of what they said was weighty and valuable, and is still worthy of our careful consideration. Job 11:1. Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, Should not the multitude of words be answere...

CHAPTER 11 ZOPHAR'S FIRST ADDRESS _ 1. Job's multitude of words rebuked (Job 11:1)_ 2. The greatness and omniscience of God (Job 11:7) 3. That Job repent and receive the Blessings (Job 11:13) Job 11:1. The third friend of Job is in every way the weakest. Speaking last he must have been the youngest of the three. He lacks the dignity of Eliphaz and the gentleness of Bildad, nor does he possess the depths of either. Evidently Job's speech has taxed his patience and irritated him. _ Should not thy mass of words be answered?_ And a man so full of talk, should he be justified? Can thy boastings make men hold th

SPEECH OF ZOPHAR.Job has shown that the assumption, that on account of the Divine righteousness only human sin can be the cause of misfortune, leads to the worst conclusions as to God's nature. What answer can the friends make? (Duhm). Job has charged God with a brutal misuse of His strength and a refined cruelty to His creature: Oh it is excellent to have a giant's strength But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant. Zophar, the youngest and most fiery of the friends, simply sees in Job's questionings about God, a denial of the Divine omniscience. If God treats Job as a sinner, He cannot be in error. Again, therefore, he calls Job to repent. He begins by criticising Job's verbosity: words and nothing else are his defence (Job 11:2 f.). Job declares that his walk is pure (emending my doctrine into my walk, Duhm, Peake). But if God were to accept Job's challenge to meet him, th

LIPS. Figure of speech _Anthropopatheia._ App-6....