One thing is clear about Job, he was no fair-weather believer; even in the darkest hours of his sufferings, he looked to God. However, he didn’t get any help from his friends. A well-known aphorism comes to mind when thinking of Job’s friends: “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

At first his friends wept for him, sat with him, and were silent for seven days (2:11–13). They probably should have remained silent. Job did not hold back his view of their advice: “But you forgers of lies, you are all worthless physicians. Oh, that you would be silent … your platitudes are proverbs of ashes” (13:4–5, 12). “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!” (12:2). It almost sounds as if Job were describing social media. Everybody has an opinion and is an expert and is not shy sharing that with us. If we were to paraphrase and sum up the dialogue between Job and his friends, it would be something like this:

Job’s friends: “Your problem, Job, is you are suffering because you are a secret sinner. So repent.”

Job: “I know I’m a sinner, but I’ve lived as righteously as I could before God. And even though I can’t explain why this is happening to me, and even if He slays me, yet I am trusting in Him; He is my Redeemer.”

Job’s friends speak many truths, in fact they are even quoted a few times in the New Testament (Job 5:13 in 1 Cor. 3:19; and Job 5:17 in Heb. 12:5). But they were not speaking “the truth in love” in connection with their “friend.” They made the principle of sowing and reaping immutable in a legalistic way by ignoring that sometimes the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer for no apparent reason. If the situation had been reversed, Job says that he would have comforted them (16:5). In the end Job prayed for them—a good example for us when we are misunderstood.