Job 20:1

ZOPHAR’S SECOND REPLY.

1. The strange composure of Job, his consciousness of innocency, and his faith in God, instead of winning the sympathy, have served only to cut to the quick the heart of his antagonist. None are more disposed to deal in denunciation than they who have been wounded in vanity by being worsted in argument. Exasperated by Job’s allusion, in his closing exhortation, to the sword and the judgment, Zophar wields the terrors of the law, and conceives that he is doing God service by such maintenance of His truth. In the vivid and masterly portraiture of the wicked rich man Zophar evidently has his eye on Job, and in describing the doom of wealth gotten by fraud and rapine, he more than insinuates, that this is the secret of Job’s trouble. Complete destruction has come upon him because there was no limit to his greed. Job’s fervent appeal to a future life, with all its resources of hope and deliverance, is offset by the fate of the godless wretch who, hurled from the summit of worldly prosperity, is consumed by a fire unkindled by human breath. The moral of Zophar’s address is, that Job, instead of talking piously, would much better give himself to repentance.