Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?
The verse stands in Zophar's first speech, whose burden is to press Job toward repentance. It belongs to the prolonged dispute between Job and his friends over the meaning of his suffering. It puts two linked questions, whether a multitude of words ought to be answered and whether a man full of talk should on that account be counted justified.
So phrased, it denies that copious speaking proves a speaker right or true, and it refuses to accept talkativeness as a substitute for justification. In its immediate setting it functions as a friend's charge that Job's many words do not make him right. The friends' general maxims were often true in themselves, yet they were misapplied to Job, whose affliction did not prove that God was displeased with him. Because the chapter belongs to those misguided speeches of the friends, its sayings are not to be received as reliable merely for standing in the book, but must be tried by other inspired Scripture, since the friends did not speak what was right concerning God and concerning Job.
The verse stands in Zophar's first speech, whose burden is to press Job toward repentance. It belongs to the prolonged dispute between Job and his friends over the meaning of his suffering. It puts two linked questions, whether a multitude of words ought to be answered and whether a man full of talk should on that account be counted justified.
So phrased, it denies that copious speaking proves a speaker right or true, and it refuses to accept talkativeness as a substitute for justification. In its immediate setting it functions as a friend's charge that Job's many words do not make him right. The friends' general maxims were often true in themselves, yet they were misapplied to Job, whose affliction did not prove that God was displeased with him. Because the chapter belongs to those misguided speeches of the friends, its sayings are not to be received as reliable merely for standing in the book, but must be tried by other inspired Scripture, since the friends did not speak what was right concerning God and concerning Job.