Job 13:4

But ye [are] forgers of lies,.... This is a hard and very harsh saying; Job was now in a passion, provoked by his friends, and retorts upon them what they had charged him with, Job 11:3; so often in

But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value. Forgers of lies - literally, artful twisters of vain speeches (Umbreit).

Forgers of lies, i.e. authors of false doctrine, to wit, that great afflictions are peculiar to hypocrites and wicked men. Physicians of no value; unfaithful and unskilful; prescribing bad remedies, and misapplying good ones.

Job 13:4 But ye [are] forgers of lies, ye [are] all physicians of no value.Ver. 4. But ye are forgers of lies] i.e. Ye create false maxims to judge me by; ye gather up without any order, and to no purpose, whatsoever cometh in your way to strengthen and maintain your false accusation against me. You are not only cencinnatores, forgers, but compactors, botchers, such as, by sewing one lie to another, do patch up a false and frivolous discourse, Mendacia mendaciis assuitis. So David, Psalms 119:69, The proud have forged (or pieced together, made it up as of many shreds) a lie against me. David saith of hypocrites, that their tongue frameth deceit, Psalms 50:19; and of Doeg, that his tongue devised mischief, like a sharp razor, doing deceit, Psalms 52:2. Jeremiah saith of his countrymen, that they had taught their tongues to speak lies, and were grown artists at it, Jeremiah 9:5; yea, that they had taken fast hold of deceit, and could not be got off without striving, Jeremiah 8:5. But these countrymen of Job were none such, for God said, "Surely they are my people, children that will not lie," Isaiah 63:8. And although every man be a liar, either by imposture or by impotence; yet it must be understood that these good men aimed at truth, and intended not to deceive Job, but to undeceive him rather. They maintained errors, but unwittingly; they charged him also (but unjustly) with hypocrisy. Hence this so severe a high charge, Ye are forgers of lies, such as our ruffians would revenge with a stab. But we must know, saith Merlin, that in those better times it was not so harsh a business in a serious disputation to call that a lie which was safely alleged by an adversary as today it is in this corrupt age of ours, wherein the greatest liars, though taken in the manner, yet take it extremely ill to be told of their fault. Besides, in the defence of God’ s cause, and the labouring truth, plain-dealing, even with our best friends, is best; so that the apostle’ s rule, Ephesians 4:31, be observed, "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice." Ye are all physicians of no value] Because you go to work upon wrong principles, and mistakenly ministered. Physicians he acknowledgeth them, and that they came with a good intent to comfort him; but, for lack of skill, instead of curing, they had well nigh killed him, because they judged amiss of his disease, and used corrosives instead of cordials.

(4) Ye are forgers of lies.—He now retorts upon his friends in terms not more deferential than their own, and calls them scrapers together, or patchers up, of falsehood, and physicians who are powerless to heal, or even to understand the case. He feels that they have failed miserably and utterly to understand him.

Verse 4. Ye are forgers of lies] Ye frame deceitful arguments: ye reason sophistically, and pervert truth and justice, in order to support your cause. Physicians of no value.] Ye are as feeble in your reasonings as ye are inefficient in your skill. Ye can neither heal the wound of my mind, nor the disease of my body. In ancient times every wise man professed skill in the healing art, and probably Job's friends had tried their skill on his body as well as on his mind. He therefore had, in his argument against their teaching, a double advantage: Your skill in divinity and physic is equal: in the former ye are forgers of lies; in the latter, ye are good-for-nothing physicians. I can see no reason to depart from the general meaning of the original to which the ancient versions adhere. The Chaldee says: "Ye are idle physicians; and, like the mortified flesh which is cut off with the knife, so are the whole of you." The imagery in the former clause is chirurpical, and refers to the sewing together, or connecting the divided sides of wounds; for טפלי topheley, which we translate forgers, comes from טפל taphal, to fasten, tie, connect, sew together. And I question whether טפלי topheley here may not as well express SURGEONS, as רפאי ropheey, in the latter clause, PHYSICIANS. Ye are CHIRURGEONS of falsity, and worthless PHYSICIANS.

4. but ye are forgers of lies] The but in Job 13:3 had for its background the knowledge of the Divine wisdom (Job 13:1-2); Job knows this well, but for all his knowledge of it he desires to plead his cause before God, he will speak unto the Almighty. This desire and purpose, however, are crossed by the thought of the use which his friends make of the Divine wisdom against him, and he is diverted from his great object to administer a rebuke to them—but ye are forgers of lies. Job 13:4-12 are therefore a digression, the main object being resumed in Job 13:13; the digression, however, is profoundly interesting. In clause one Job tells his friends that their assumptions of his guilt and the application which they made to his case of the Divine omniscience are false; in the second he compares them to ignorant physicians, who take in hand a disease which they are incompetent to treat.

But ye are forgers of lies - The word lies here seems to be used in a large sense, to denote sophisms, false accusations, errors.

4. Forgers of lies — Taphal, “to forge,” “to stitch upon or together,” primarily means to “glue together,” (Gesenius,) or “smear over.” The lie needs no “glueing” to bind it fast to its victim.