So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.
Job 32:1 stands at the close of the long argument and replies between Job and his three friends and at the opening and beginning of Elihu's instructive discourses and speeches, which run from chapter 32 through chapter 36. It comes as Job concludes and finishes his speaking, including his answer to Bildad, and belongs to the account of his continued defense of himself and the beginning of Elihu's argument. That argument reproves Job and challenges his sense of his own importance while emphasizing that God is everything, arising after Job's exchanges with his three friends about the cause and purpose of suffering.
The three men ceased and stopped answering Job because they regarded and considered him as righteous in his own eyes, convinced of his own righteousness and persisting in self-justification. They stopped because they could not prove him guilty and had neither helped him nor convinced him of guilt. Bildad's short discourse in chapter 25 was their last argument and last effort to convince Job that he was a sinner deserving his condition, which Job answered in bitterness.
Job's integrity was real and he knew it as he continued to defend himself, yet his self-justification went too far in treating his righteousness as greater than God's and assuming his suffering had come without cause. His persistent self-justification was provoked by their false accusations, and though he could not understand God's dealings with him, he did not accuse God of wrongdoing. Their silence came after Job had finished speaking, when a young man who had been listening then spoke to argue with and reprove Job, and Elihu's discourse that followed did not help Job much. After Elihu, Job was brought to recognize that God understands his character and what is right better than he does, and only when the Lord spoke — answering Job's request to hear from Him — did Job come to a new experience in which having heard of God he now saw Him.
Job 32:1 stands at the close of the long argument and replies between Job and his three friends and at the opening and beginning of Elihu's instructive discourses and speeches, which run from chapter 32 through chapter 36. It comes as Job concludes and finishes his speaking, including his answer to Bildad, and belongs to the account of his continued defense of himself and the beginning of Elihu's argument. That argument reproves Job and challenges his sense of his own importance while emphasizing that God is everything, arising after Job's exchanges with his three friends about the cause and purpose of suffering.
The three men ceased and stopped answering Job because they regarded and considered him as righteous in his own eyes, convinced of his own righteousness and persisting in self-justification. They stopped because they could not prove him guilty and had neither helped him nor convinced him of guilt. Bildad's short discourse in chapter 25 was their last argument and last effort to convince Job that he was a sinner deserving his condition, which Job answered in bitterness.
Job's integrity was real and he knew it as he continued to defend himself, yet his self-justification went too far in treating his righteousness as greater than God's and assuming his suffering had come without cause. His persistent self-justification was provoked by their false accusations, and though he could not understand God's dealings with him, he did not accuse God of wrongdoing. Their silence came after Job had finished speaking, when a young man who had been listening then spoke to argue with and reprove Job, and Elihu's discourse that followed did not help Job much. After Elihu, Job was brought to recognize that God understands his character and what is right better than he does, and only when the Lord spoke — answering Job's request to hear from Him — did Job come to a new experience in which having heard of God he now saw Him.