Morning Bible Study: Job 12:1-5

Job’s Reply to Zophar
12:1 Then Job answered:
2 No doubt you are the people,
and wisdom will die with you!
3 But I also have a mind like you;
I am not inferior to you.
Who doesn’t know the things you are talking about?
4 I am a laughingstock to my friends,
by calling on God, who answers me.
The righteous and blameless man is a laughingstock.
5 The one who is at ease holds calamity in contempt
and thinks it is prepared for those whose feet are slipping.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com) 

"Job upbraids his friends with the good opinion they had of their own wisdom compared with his. We are apt to call reproofs reproaches, and to think ourselves mocked when advised and admonished; this is our folly; yet here was color for this charge. He suspected the true cause of their conduct to be, that they despised him who was fallen into poverty. It is the way of the world. Even the just, upright man, if he comes under a cloud, is looked upon with contempt."

Morning Bible Study: Job 11:13-20

13 As for you, if you redirect your heart
and spread out your hands to him in prayer—
14 if there is iniquity in your hand, remove it,
and don’t allow injustice to dwell in your tents—
15 then you will hold your head high, free from fault.
You will be firmly established and unafraid.
16 For you will forget your suffering,
recalling it only as water that has flowed by.
17 Your life will be brighter than noonday;
its darkness will be like the morning.
18 You will be confident, because there is hope.
You will look carefully about and lie down in safety.
19 You will lie down with no one to frighten you,
and many will seek your favor.
20 But the sight of the wicked will fail.
Their way of escape will be cut off,
and their only hope is their last breath.

Commentary
(the following are excerpts from Matthew Henry's Complete and Concise Commentaries, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)

"Zophar exhorts Job to repentance, and gives him encouragement, yet mixed with hard thoughts of him. He thought that worldly prosperity was always the lot of the righteous, and that Job was to be deemed a hypocrite unless his prosperity was restored." 

"If we are looked upon in the face of the anointed, our faces, that were dejected, may be lifted up—that were polluted, being washed with the blood of Christ, may be lifted up without spot. If we make our peace with God, we may with cheerfulness look our friends in the face."