Zophar צוֹפַר
One of Job's three friends, the Naamathite
Biography
Zophar the Naamathite was one of the three friends of Job who came to comfort him during his time of suffering. Along with Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar visited Job after hearing about his affliction (Job.2.11). Zophar is mentioned as the third speaker in the cycles of dialogue between Job and his friends. In his first speech (Job 11), Zophar rebukes Job for justifying himself and accuses him of mocking God. He asserts that God's wisdom is unsearchable and that Job should repent of his supposed sins. In his second speech (Job 20), Zophar describes the fate of the wicked, implying that Job's suffering is a result of his wrongdoing. Zophar's speeches reflect the traditional belief that suffering is a consequence of sin and that righteousness leads to prosperity. However, the book of Job challenges this simplistic view and presents a more complex understanding of God's justice and human suffering. In the end, God rebukes Zophar and his friends for speaking falsely about Him and instructs them to offer sacrifices and seek Job's intercession (Job.42.7-9).
In Scripture
1 biblical bookJob 4 verses
- Job 2:11
"Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him."
- Job 11:1
"Then Zophar, the Naamathite, answered,"
- Job 20:1
"Then Zophar the Naamathite answered,"
- Job 42:9
"So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did what Yahweh commanded them, and Yahweh accepted Job."
Names & Aliases
| Form | Language | Script | Strong's |
|---|---|---|---|
| Named | Hebrew | צוֹפַר | H6691 |
Zophar
iction, make an appointment together to visit and comfort him. He is from the tribe of Naamah, a tribe and place otherwise unknown, for as all the other friends and Job himself are from lands outside of Palestine, it is not likely that this place was identical with Naamah in the West of Judah (Jos 15:41). He speaks but twice (Job 11; 20); by his silence the 3rd time the writer seems to intimate that with Bildad's third speech (Job 25; see under BILDAD) the friends' arguments are exhausted. He is the most impetuous and dogmatic of the three (compare Job 11:2,3; 20:2,3); stung to passionate response by Job's presumption in maintaining that he is wronged and is seeking light from God. His words are in a key of intensity amounting to reckless exaggeration. He is the first to accuse Job directly of wickedness; averring indeed that his punishment is too good for him (11:6); he rebukes Job's impious presumption in trying to find out the unsearchable secrets of God (11:7-12); and yet, like the rest of the friends, promises peace and restoration on condition of penitence and putting away iniquity (11:13-19). Even from this promise, however, he reverts to the fearful peril of the wicked (11:20); and in his 2nd speech, outdoing the others, he presses their lurid description of the wicked man's woes to the extreme (20:5-29), and calls forth a straight contradiction from Job, who, not in wrath, but in dismay, is constrained by loyalty to truth to acknowledge things as they are. Zophar seems designed to represent the wrong-headedness of the odium theologicum.
John Franklin Genung
zo'-fim, (sedheh tsophim; eis agrou skopian): The place on the top of Pisgah to which Balak took Balaam, whence only a part