Intervention!

We come back to the middle of a conversation between Job and his friends, mainly with Zophar the Naamathite. He says: 'prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward him; If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away' Job counters back with: 'I am not inferior to you… they that provoke God are secure'. Basically we see that Job no longer trusts God, no longer believes that He is good. As it says before, Job 'feareth God' and so he follows Him- now he only fears Him and thinks that by being God's children life will only be hard because He is constantly testing you, he thinks that the ones who disobey Him are the ones who prosper and are safe from His curses. I think that is very reasonable of him to say, because God not only let Satan destroy all of Job's possessions, He also let Satan kill his family and cover his body in boils. Not even after all that does Job curse him, only when he sits to think about it and realizes the injustice of it all, Why him?

Job also says that any man born from a woman is filthy, for 'who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?' Here we see references to the story of Adam and Eve, partly with the sexist theme again- it says that women are unclean, and also we see the punishment that God gave Eve for eating the forbidden fruit-giving birth. Well, now his friend Eliphaz the Temanite says that yes, he is the same as all the others so he doesn't know more than them. He says that the man who is good to God and reaches out to Him will be blessed, those who don't and who sin and curse Him, like Job, are condemned by their own mouths.

Wow, something very weird happened, I was thinking of how all of Job's friends talk to him and all they tell him to comfort him and share his grief. They just reprimand him and tell him he isn't good enough, they even say that he deserves worse punishments than those God gave him. Then the next line I read says: 'Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.' Which is exactly what I was thinking? They are not very good friends to have around when your life is nearly over and you are suffering and in pain, you can see.

Job now just feels kind of deflated, he is let down by his friends scolding him and he is just waiting for death to come. He doesn't really understand what it is happening to him, he was so good and so pure to God, but he doesn't blame Him anymore. However, he does say: 'the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.' This is probably referring to God as the hypocrite, which He basically is, He is making one of his most loyal servants who has never done anything against Him suffer horribly, just to test his faith. I think that is totally turning His back on Job, especially since this deal all has to do with Satan.

In the end, his friends stop arguing with Job because 'he was righteous in his own eyes', and 'he justified himself rather than God.'

I don't think Job believes in God anymore, or worships or respects Him, it's very possible after everything God has done to him, but I don't think it is a very good idea to be comparing himself to God, as we can see how jealous and angry God can turn.