Job’s friends taught falsehood

Just saw a blog pass on the opinion that Job’s friends were wrong because they used the truth wrongly.

I am not prepared to take apart every statement by Job’s three friends and analyze each one in context. So maybe they did use the truth wrongly. But I am sure that they did use falsehood wrongly too, and that far from being of any use in positive preaching, they are examples only of sin and error. For example:

Dominion and fear are with God;
he makes peace in his high heaven.
Is there any number to his armies?
Upon whom does his light not arise?
How then can man be in the right before God?
How can he who is born of woman be pure?
Behold, even the moon is not bright,
and the stars are not pure in his eyes;
how much less man, who is a maggot,
and the son of man, who is a worm!

This is false theology–though it is great material for understanding the philosopher Hobbes.  Our reason to fear God is not based on his sheer power; and the fact that he is so powerful does not mean that we must all believe he finds fault with us. When God created the stars, he did not say that they were impure. When he made man he did not claim he was a maggot or worm.

Yet I have heard a famous Reformed preacher actually use the words of Bildad the Shuite (Job 25) in addressing God in prayer as if they were describing his great majesty.

No. Bildad was constructing a false god. It wasn’t just a truth wrongly applied in Job’s case. It was a falsehood that can never rightly be applied to anyone.

Again, this doesn’t rule out that, in other speeches, maybe the truth was wrongly applied. But the above passage leads me to a hermeneutic of suspicion with the rest of them.

One thought on “Job’s friends taught falsehood

  1. pduggie

    Bildad seemms to be on a better track in Job 8m because job replies to him and says

    “Truly I know that it is so”

    Bildad got conned by Eliphaz and Zophar at that point (bildad seems to be channeling early eliphaz, who says the night-ghost told him God finds fault with all his angels)

    Reply

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