If iniquity be in your hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in your tents.
All Commentaries on Job 11:14 Go To Job 11
Didymus the Blind
AD 398
Zophar introduces himself as teacher and exhorts Job with the words, “Even if you are very clean, so clean that you stretch your hands continuously in prayer and ask for God’s gifts, be still prepared to reject the evil that remains within you. Iniquity shall not reside in you.” That means, “Even if you somehow start to do unrighteousness, iniquity shall not stay to nest in your life.” Here Zophar means the following: Moral virtue must correspond to the purity of soul [and reason]. Similar to this is, “Lifting up holy hands without anger or argument.” But Zophar is wrong if he deems it possible to have a pure heart and unjust deeds [at the same time]. The opposite, one could say, would be possible, namely, to have righteous deeds and an impure heart. One would thereby indicate that if someone acts mercifully with an impure heart only to be seen by the people, the deed looks the same.