2:11 When Job’s three friends heard about all this calamity that had happened to him, each of them came from his own country 2 – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. 3 They met together 4 to come to show sympathy 5 for him and to console 6 him.
20:1 Then Zophar the Naamathite answered:
1 sn See N. C. Habel, “‘Only the Jackal is My Friend,’ On Friends and Redeemers in Job,” Int 31 (1977): 227-36.
2 tn Heb “a man from his place”; this is the distributive use, meaning “each man came from his place.”
3 sn Commentators have tried to analyze the meanings of the names of the friends and their locations. Not only has this proven to be difficult (Teman is the only place that is known), it is not necessary for the study of the book. The names are probably not symbolic of the things they say.
4 tn The verb can mean that they “agreed together”; but it also (and more likely) means that they came together at a meeting point to go visit Job together.
5 tn The verb “to show grief” is נוּד (nud), and literally signifies “to shake the head.” It may be that his friends came to show the proper sympathy and express the appropriate feelings. They were not ready for what they found.
6 tn The second infinitive is from נָחָם (nakham, “to comfort, console” in the Piel). This word may be derived from a word with a meaning of sighing deeply.
7 sn Zophar breaks in with an impassioned argument about the brevity and prosperity of the life of the wicked. But every statement that he makes is completely irrelevant to the case at hand. The speech has four sections: after a short preface (2-3) he portrays the brevity of the triumph of the wicked (4-11), retribution for sin (12-22), and God’s swift judgment (23-29). See further B. H. Kelly, “Truth in Contradiction, A Study of Job 20 and 21,” Int 15 (1961): 147-56.