Year 8, Day 114: Job 20

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Ever wonder about the problem of social wisdom, cultural proverbs, and truisms?  They do contain truth.  There is a little bit of truth in most things!  The problem is that while they seem like the truth, they really aren’t.  They don’t universally apply.  They are true in some circumstances, perhaps even many circumstances.  But they aren’t universally true.

This is the case with Zophar’s speech today.  When Christians hear these words, we want to jump on them and talk about how true they are.  He talks about evil within people being vomited back up.  He talks about the wicked perishing like their own dung.  He talks about the memory of the evil ones fading away.  Zophar talks about evil sowing and then reaping its own evil.

We hear things like that and we want to believe them.  We desperately want to believe that evil will be punished and judged.  It will be.  One day, God will have His say and all will be exposed.  In fact, all of us will know our evil exposed under the judgment of God.

The reality, though, is that Zophar’s words simply don’t play out in reality.  The wicked often prosper.  The wicked often seek and find the fruit of their toil.  They often find, at least in this life, thee prosperity that their heart desires.

This shows us again what has been a significant theme throughout the book.  We cannot judge a book by its cover.  We cannot assume that because Job is having a hard time that he is evil.  We likewise cannot assume that because a person is having an easy life that they are righteous.  Who are we to judge in any way?  The only way to truly know a person is to know their heart and motivation deep within them.

It’s harder to live this way.  It’s hard to refrain from judging until we know a person’s character.  But it is the better way.  It is the godly way.  When we buy into cultural wisdom, we often err in our decisions because we allow ourselves to apply what seems like truth to a situation to which it may not apply.  The problem is that we never realize that it doesn’t apply.  That’s the danger of Zophar’s words.

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