Job 11:13

ZOPHAR PROMISES RESTORATION IF JOB WILL CONFESS AND REPENT

"If thou set thy heart aright,

And stretch out thy hands toward him;

If iniquity be in thy hand, put it away,

And let righteousness dwell in thy tents.

Surely then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot;

Yea, thou shalt be steadfast, and shalt not fear:

For thou shalt forget thy misery;

Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away.

And thy life shall be clearer than the noonday;

though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning.

And thou shalt be secure because there is hope;

Yea, thou shalt search about thee, and shalt take thy rest in safety.

And thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid;

Yea, many shall make suit unto thee.

But the eyes of the wicked shall fail,

And they shall have no way to flee;

and their hope shall be the giving up of the ghost."

"If thou set thy heart aright" (Job 11:13). "The word thou in this place is emphatic, carrying the implication that, "If thou with all thy wickedness, if even thou, wilt abandon it, thou shalt be restored."[6]

"Though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning" (Job 11:17). "This is a remarkable antithesis to what Job had said back in Job 10:21f. Job's future need not be a day of darkness whose very noon is night."[7] It may be, if only Job will confess and repent, a brighter day than any ordinary day at noon, "Whose very night is as bright as the morning."[8]

What comfort could such an exhortation have been to a man who knew nothing that he could confess and whose repentance, if he had pretended any, would have been the utmost hypocrisy?

We cannot escape the conviction that Satan here played one of his trump cards in his vain effort to shake the integrity of Job. Zophar and the other friends of Job, of course, were unaware that they, in these confrontations, were primary agents of the devil himself.