Should your lies make men hold their peace? and when you mock, shall no man make you ashamed?
Read Chapter 11
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Men. Hebrew, "shall thy lies make men keep silence? "Septuagint, "Blessed be the short-lived son of a woman. Speak not much, for there is no one to give sentence against thee. "(Haydock)
Mocked, by not acquiescing to their solid arguments, (Menochius) and speaking with much animation. (Pineda)
3. The uninstructed mind, as we have said, is sorely galled by the sentences of truth, and reckons silence to be a punishment; it takes all that is said aright to be the disgrace of mocking at itself. For when a true voice addresses itself to the ears of bad men, guilt stings the recollection, and in the rebuking of evil practices, in proportion as the mind is touched with consciousness within, it is stirred up to eagerness in gainsaying without; it cannot bear the voice, in that, being touched in the wound of its guilt it is put to pain, and by that which is delivered against the wicked generally, it imagines that it is itself attacked in a special manner; and what it inwardly remembers itself to have done, it blushes to hear the sound of without. Whence it presently prepares itself for a defence, that it may cover the shame of its guilt by words of froward gainsaying. For as the righteous, touching certain things which have been done unrighteously by them, account the voice of re...
Zophar means, “Is there none to answer you?” meaning other than we ourselves. Or it could mean: “There is nobody who knows your misfortunes, apart from God, and if he had wanted to disgrace you, then you would have been already dead.” Notice that, since Job does not say anywhere that he is unjustly suffering and that he has no faults, this is exactly what they resentfully bring up to him. - "Commentary on Job 11.3b"
