Job’s Friends
Were Sure Too

What is this page about?

The rule is almost never written down. People say it when bad news comes about a family. Here it is, as people usually hear it. This page wrote these words. They are not from a real person.

Notice something strange. You were not told what happened to these two families. The speaker gave both judgements without the event. So the judgement never came from the event.

Three different ideas are mixed together here.

You can believe that God rules over every sickness. And you can still say, “I am not able to know what this one sickness means.” Christians have usually believed exactly this. This page does not say that suffering has no meaning. It says that you cannot read the meaning from a person’s face.

The short answer

1. People bring this idea to Jesus two times. He says no both times. Some people told Jesus that the ruler Pilate had killed some men from Galilee. Jesus asked:

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no

Luke 13:2–3 · World English Bible

Then Jesus spoke about eighteen people who died when a tower fell on them. He gave the same answer (Luke 13:4-5). One event was a killing and one was an accident. He treated them the same.

2. The followers of Jesus think the same way, and he corrects them. They saw a man who was born blind.

His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “This man didn’t sin, nor did his parents”

John 9:2–3 · World English Bible

In simple words: His followers asked, “Teacher, why was this man born blind? Did he sin, or did his parents sin?” Jesus answered, “It was not because of his sin or his parents’ sin.”

They were so sure that suffering means sin. Their only question was: whose sin?

3. The Bible shows this way of reading giving two opposite answers in five minutes. A snake bit Paul’s hand on the island of Malta. The people said at once: “No doubt this man is a murderer” (Acts 28:4). But Paul shook the snake off and did not die. So they changed their minds and “said that he was a god” (Acts 28:6). First a murderer, then a god. This way of reading only gives back what you already think.

4. Job’s three friends hold this rule. One friend, Eliphaz, asks: “whoever perished, being innocent?” (Job 4:7) Another, Bildad, says: “If you were pure and upright, surely now he would awaken for you” (Job 8:6). These are serious men. Most of what they believe about God is right. Their mistake is what they think this allows them to say about Job.

5. The reader knows the answer from the start. Before anything happens, God himself calls Job “a blameless and an upright man” (Job 1:8). So we read every speech of the friends and we know that they are wrong. The book was written this way on purpose.

6. When a rule must be true, people begin to invent the evidence. Later Eliphaz accuses Job of crimes: “You have sent widows away empty” (Job 22:9). There is no evidence for this anywhere. Eliphaz did not see Job do it. He decided that Job must have done it, because of what happened to Job.

7. At the end, God is angry with the friends, not with Job.

My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job has.

Job 42:7 · World English Bible

In simple words: I am angry with you and your two friends. You have not said what is true about me. My servant Job has.

Job complained for the whole book. The friends defended God with polite words. But God was angry with the polite ones. Job had already said what was wrong with them: “Will you speak unrighteously for God, and talk deceitfully for him?” (Job 13:7) In simple words: will you say false things to defend God?

8. Job says that bad people often do very well, and nobody corrects him. “Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?” (Job 21:7) Psalm 73 and other books say the same. One book says it in a few words: “All things come alike to all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:2)

9. Jesus says the same about good things. God “makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Good things come to both kinds of people. So getting good things proves nothing about you either.

10. For 1,600 years Christian teachers have said that we cannot read it. See Part 3.

11. Luther says the rule is turned upside down. Stand at the cross of Jesus and use the rule. A man is dying as a criminal, and everyone has left him. By the rule, God is against him. No answer in history was ever more wrong. And many people gave that answer on that afternoon.

12. The Bible does call some events a judgement. But then the Bible itself tells us. For example, King Herod died “because he didn’t give God the glory” (Acts 12:23). Take away these words. Then we only know that a king died of a terrible sickness. When a business fails today, we have only the event. Someone must make up the meaning.

13. What the Bible says about God’s correction, it says to the person who suffers, about himself. “My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord” (Hebrews 12:5). “Chastening” means correction. This is for you to use on yourself. Pointed at another person, it stops being comfort and becomes a judgement.

Old words and new words

The idea has not changed in three thousand years. Only the words have changed. Compare the friends of Job with two modern examples that this page made up.

Job’s friend, long ago: “Remember, now, whoever perished, being innocent?”

“I do not say it is always so” sounds modest. But see what it does. The cases that fit are counted. The cases that do not fit are excused before anyone asks.

This is the kind half of the rule. But see what it takes away. The Bible asks a suffering person to look at himself. The rule gives him praise in place of that. So it is not really kind.

The same event, two readings

Think of two cases. This page made them up.

• A man in his fifties loses the business that he built for twenty-two years. He also loses his house. Everyone speaks well of him. He has quietly paid other people’s bills for years.
• A man in his fifties loses the business that he built for twenty-two years. He also loses his house. He left the church four years ago after an angry argument about money.

The event is the same, word for word. Only the description of the man changed. And the description did not say what he had done. It only said what people thought of him. Did your answer change? What is God doing in each case?

The rule uses two things: what happened, and what you think of the person. Look at what it gives.

There are four boxes, and the rule is “right” in all four. Nothing can ever count against it. So ask the most important question:

This hurts in both directions. Maybe people think well of you. Then the rule praises you every time something goes wrong. It quietly takes away the one thing the Bible asks you to do: look at yourself. John Calvin saw this in 1553. We are hard on other people and easy on ourselves.

What the church said

Here are five old voices from 1,400 years. Each one wrote about this question, often after a disaster.

Famine makes no distinction

Cyprian, church leader in North Africa, year 252, in a time of deadly sickness

In simple words: Hunger does not choose between one kind of person and another.

He was burying Christians and people who were not Christians. He said that sickness comes to both in the same way. The difference is how people answer it.

As the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke… the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.

Augustine, about the year 420, after enemies destroyed much of the city of Rome

In simple words: The same fire makes gold shine and makes dry grass smoke. In the same way, the same trouble makes good people pure, and it destroys bad people.

The trouble is the same. What it does inside the person is different. And we cannot see that from outside.

were unable to distinguish the different kinds of strokes

Gregory the Great, about the year 595, on Job’s friends

In simple words: They could not tell the different kinds of suffering apart.

Gregory gives four possible reasons for suffering. The modern rule knows only two.

the adversities of this world do not come to someone except as a punishment for sin

Thomas Aquinas, about the year 1263, on what Job’s friends believed

In simple words: Troubles in this world come to a person only as a punishment for sin. (Aquinas says that this was the friends’ mistake.)

The fifth voice is the prayer book of the Church of England from 1662. It has a service for visiting a sick person. The minister tells the sick person that the sickness surely comes from God. Then he says that it may be sent to test his patience, or it may be sent to correct him. The service does not say which one. It gives no way to find out. And the minister says all of it to the sick man, about himself. Nothing in the service lets a visitor form an opinion.

So all five show the same thing. They are very sure that God is at work. They are very unwilling to say what he is doing in one case. And they are least willing when the case belongs to another person.

To be honest, not every Christian teacher was so careful. In 1755 an earthquake destroyed the city of Lisbon. John Wesley quickly wrote a small book. He asked if God was judging that nation. But he spoke about a whole nation, as the Old Testament prophets did. That is different from reading one person’s sickness.

The three best answers

“Deuteronomy 28 lists blessings for obeying God and curses for not obeying. God made this link himself.” This is fair. But that chapter speaks to a nation, not to one person. It is part of God’s special agreement with Israel. And when a disaster was God’s judgement, prophets said so. Nobody worked it out from a neighbour’s bad harvest.

“Paul says that some Christians at Corinth were sick, and some had died, because of how they took the Lord’s Supper.” Yes. But how did anyone know? An apostle told them, in a letter. And look at what Paul says next: “let a man examine himself” (1 Corinthians 11:28). He does not say “examine each other”.

“If we can never say what God is doing, then providence is useless.” This is a serious point. But nobody says that we can know nothing. When the Bible explains an event, we know. When the trouble is your own, the Bible tells you to look at yourself and take it from God’s hand. And we always know much: God is not far away. “he does not afflict willingly” (Lamentations 3:33). That means he does not enjoy giving pain. And nothing separates us from his love (Romans 8). Only one thing is taken away: our judgement on another person.

What to do

Start with the one thing Job’s friends did right. They travelled a long way. They cried. Then:

So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

Job 2:13 · World English Bible

In simple words: They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. Nobody said a word to him, because they saw how great his pain was.

The book never blames them for this. Everything goes wrong when Eliphaz begins to explain.

The Bible does not command these things anywhere:

• to work out what God is doing in another person’s trouble;
• to use a person’s good or bad name as evidence about his place with God;
• to invent a hidden sin when there is no sign of one.

The Bible commands these things many times:

• “Weep with those who weep.” (Romans 12:15)
• “Bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). That means: help to carry each other’s heavy loads.
• “I was sick, and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:36)
• Look at yourself, when the trouble is your own.

The rule pointed at others is a weapon. Pointed at yourself, by yourself, it is something good that the Bible asks of you.

Where this page ends

Check it yourself

1. Read Luke 13:1-9, John 9 and Acts 28:1-10.
2. Read the whole book of Job. Remember what chapter 1 told you and the friends did not know. Then read Job 42:7-10.
3. Read Psalm 73 and Ecclesiastes 9:1-3.
4. Read the other side too: John Wesley’s small book about the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755.