Today's Passage: Job 20

These verses are a classic case of someone trying to show off by flexing their mental muscles.  Zophar attempts to straighten Job out on his thinking of the wicked man.  The problem is, as we'll see tomorrow, Zophar is the one that is showing narrow mindedness.  Job meant his statements in a completely different way than Zophar took them.

At the beginning of these  verses we see Zophar's motivation in this speech.  He shows much pride in his intellect and claims that he can not sit by idly while Job makes these flawed statements.  So what does Zophar do?  He proceeds to explain in great detail how the lives of wicked men play out.  These statements would have been some of the most painfully obvious to a devoted follower of God like Job.  While reading this passage I imagined Zophar as that co-worker or friend that knows everything about everything, and attempts to teach you how you are suppose to do something you are already proficient at.  The truth is Zophar's speech here is based on Job's previous statements which Zophar mistakenly heard as disbelief.  When in actuality Job was asking rhetorical questions to make his point about God's judgment.

This should be a lesson for us not to be like Zophar.  Just because a problem appears to be in a persons perception  we should always ask the question "OK, so here is what I'm hearing you say... Is that what you're meaning?"  If we were to take the time to do this I believe it would reduce the number of arguments we find our selves in.