Job 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Zophar the Naamathite speaks for the first time, answering Job's long speech with a rebuke: Job talks too much and claims to be clean, and Zophar wishes God would speak and show him that God is demanding less of him than his guilt deserves. Zophar argues that God's wisdom is higher, deeper, longer and wider than anything a person can measure, and that God sees false and evil people and takes note. He ends with a condition: if Job sets his heart right and puts away wrongdoing, his misery will pass and he will live secure, but the wicked will find no escape.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Zophar the Naamathite answered.
   • Zophar the Naamathite spoke.
2. 11:2
   • Zophar asks whether a multitude of words should go unanswered.
   • Zophar asks whether a man full of talk should be declared right.
3. 11:3
   • Zophar asks whether Job's empty boasting should make men keep silent.
   • Zophar says Job mocks.
   • Zophar asks whether no one shall shame Job when he mocks.
4. 11:4
   • Zophar says Job has claimed his teaching is pure.
   • Zophar says Job has claimed he is clean in God's eyes.
5. 11:5
   • Zophar wishes that God would speak.
   • Zophar wishes that God would open his lips against Job.
6. 11:6
   • Zophar wishes that God would tell Job the secrets of wisdom.
   • Zophar says that sound wisdom is double, or has two sides.
   • Zophar tells Job to know that God exacts from him less than his iniquity deserves.
7. 11:7
   • Zophar asks whether Job can find out God by searching.
   • Zophar asks whether Job can find out the Almighty to his limit.
8. 11:8
   • It is as high as the heavens.
   • Zophar asks what Job can do about it.
   • It is deeper than Sheol.
   • Zophar asks what Job can know about it.
9. 11:9
   • Its measure is longer than the earth.
   • It is broader than the sea.
10. 11:10
    • If God passes through and shuts a man up, no one can turn him back.
    • If God calls an assembly, no one can turn him back.
11. 11:11
    • God knows worthless men.
    • God sees iniquity.
    • Zophar asks whether God will not then consider it.
    • It is ambiguous whether God does not need to give it further consideration or whether the question is asked that he will consider it.
12. 11:12
    • An empty-headed man will get understanding.
    • A wild donkey's colt is born a man.
    • It is ambiguous whether the saying means a hollow man can become wise or means he can no more become wise than a wild donkey's colt can be born a man.
13. 11:13
    • Zophar sets the condition that Job prepare his heart.
    • Zophar sets the condition that Job spread out his hands toward God.
14. 11:14
    • Zophar sets the condition that if iniquity is in Job's hand he put it far away.
    • Zophar sets the condition that Job not let wrongdoing dwell in his tents.
15. 11:15
    • Then Job will lift up his face without blemish.
    • Job will be firmly established.
    • Job will not fear.
16. 11:16
    • Job will forget his misery.
    • Job will remember it as waters that have passed away.
17. 11:17
    • Job's lifetime will rise brighter than noonday.
    • Darkness will be like the morning.
    • It is ambiguous whether the second line says darkness will become like morning or says Job will shine forth like the morning.
18. 11:18
    • Job will be confident because there is hope.
    • Job will search about him, or dig about him, and lie down in safety.
    • It is ambiguous whether the verb means to dig or to look about.
19. 11:19
    • Job will lie down with none to make him afraid.
    • Many will seek Job's favor.
20. 11:20
    • The eyes of the wicked will fail.
    • Escape will perish from the wicked.
    • The hope of the wicked is the breathing out of life.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

Zophar is the third of Job's three friends and this is his first speech; Eliphaz and Bildad have each already spoken and been answered. Naamah, the place he comes from, cannot be located with any confidence today, probably somewhere in the desert country south or east of Israel, like the homelands of the other two friends.

11:2

KJV "justified" is a courtroom word meaning declared innocent by a judge, not "excused" or "shown to have a point." Legal language runs through this whole speech.

11:4

"Doctrine" in 1611 English meant simply "what a person teaches," not a formal set of beliefs. Zophar is summing up Job's position in his own words rather than quoting a sentence Job actually said; Job has claimed innocence repeatedly, but not in these exact terms.

11:5

Job has repeatedly demanded that God appear and state the case against him. Zophar throws that wish back at him: if God really did open his mouth, Zophar says, Job would not like what came out of it.

11:6

The Hebrew here is compressed and its sense is disputed. The word rendered "two sides" literally means "double" or "folded over," and translators take it variously as wisdom having two sides, wisdom being many-layered, or God's wisdom being twice what Job imagines. The rendering keeps the ambiguity rather than choosing.

11:7

"The Almighty" translates the Hebrew title Shaddai, an old name for God used far more often in Job than anywhere else in the Bible. Its original meaning is uncertain, suggestions include "of the mountain" and "the destroyer", and the traditional English "Almighty" comes from ancient translators' guesswork.

11:8

"Hell" here is the King James rendering of Sheol, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead going, good and bad alike. It is the deepest place imaginable, the opposite pole to the heavens, not a place of punishment, which is a later idea attached to the English word "hell."

11:10

The verse is built from courtroom and prison vocabulary. "Shut up" means to imprison; "gather together" means to convene an assembly, which in an ancient town served as the court. The picture is arrest and trial by someone against whom no appeal is possible.

11:11

"Vain" in 1611 English meant empty or worthless, not conceited about one's appearance. Vain men are men with nothing solid in them, and here the sense leans toward false or deceitful.

11:12

A proverb, and its second half is famously hard to construe. The Hebrew can mean that an empty-headed man is born no more capable of wisdom than a wild donkey's colt, or, reading it as a stated impossibility: that a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey's colt is born a human being. The wild donkey was the standard byword for something untamed and untamable.

11:13

Reaching out or spreading the hands, palms turned up, was the ordinary posture of prayer in the ancient Near East, the way kneeling or folded hands is in some cultures now. Zophar is describing the physical act of praying.

11:14

"Tabernacles" is 1611 English for tents. A man's tent stood for his whole household (family, servants, and property), so the phrase means letting no wrongdoing exist anywhere in what belongs to you.

11:15

A face lowered or covered was the visible mark of shame or guilt; to lift the face was to be able to meet people's eyes. "Without spot" means without blemish or stain, the language of a face unmarked by disgrace.

11:16

Streams in this dry country ran hard after rain and then dried up completely. Water "that passes away" is not water flowing steadily by but water that is simply gone, the image is of something entirely finished, not merely receding.

11:17

"Age" in the King James Version means a lifetime, the length of one's life, not old age. The second half of the verse turns on a Hebrew word normally meaning darkness or gloom: even the dark stretches of Job's life would be like the growing light of dawn.

11:18

The Hebrew word behind "dig about thee" is uncertain. It may mean to dig, perhaps a defensive trench or a well, or to search and look around you. Either way the picture is of a man secure enough to check his surroundings and then sleep.

11:19

"Make suit unto thee" means to seek your favor, the way petitioners come to a man of standing to ask a favor or a judgment, often bringing a gift. It describes restored honor in the community, the reverse of Job's present position.

11:20

"The giving up of the ghost" is King James English for breathing one's last; "ghost" here means breath or life-spirit, not an apparition. The line says the only thing the wicked have left to look forward to is dying.