Since Zophar does not recognize Job’s virtue and the goal of his consistent remarks, he says to Job, “Do not talk much.” The word of holy Scripture teaches us to control our words. It says, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking.” Here Scripture calls the utterance of inappropriate things “many words.” But it is not the number of uttered words that make a babbler. The apostle shows this when he “continued speaking until midnight.” One can, however, be astonished about Zophar’s audacity toward Job. Although he answered Job, Zophar claimed that there was no one to answer him. Thereby Zophar shows one should not speak too audaciously, yet he does so himself in maintaining that Job is suffering due to his personal wickedness.
Do you think that by speaking many words you will improve your position and reduce us to silence and amazement with a long speech? Since the holy Job was not only proven innocent of any crime by using just arguments but also called God to his trial as a witness of his upright life, Zophar tries to accuse him first of verbosity and then of unrighteousness. By demonstrating Job’s biased opinion about God’s power and wisdom, Zophar tries to show what had inconsiderately erupted in the freedom of Job’s words. It would have been fitting [for Job] to remember the weakness of his nature.
2. It is the practice of the impertinent ever to answer by the opposite what is said aright, lest, if they assent to the things asserted, they should seem inferior. And to these the words of the righteous, however small in number they have been heard, are ‘much,’ in that as they cut their evil habits to the quick, they fall heavy upon the hearing, whence that is even wrested to a crime, which by a right declaration is pronounced against crimes. For the very person, who had delivered strong sentences on grounds of truth, Zophar rebukes and calls full of words, in that, whereas wisdom reprimands sins by the mouth of the righteous, it sounds like superfluity of talkativeness to the ears of the foolish. For froward men account nothing right, but what they themselves think, and they reckon the words of the righteous idle in the degree that they find them differing from their own notions. Nor yet did Zophar deliver a fallacious sentiment, ‘that a man full of words could never be justified,’ in that so long as anyone lets himself out in words, the gravity of silence being gone, he parts with the safe keeping of the soul. For hence it is written, And the work of righteousness, silence. [Is. 32, 17] Hence Solomon saith, He that hath no rule over his own spirit in talking, is like a city that is broken down, and without walls. [Prov. 25, 28] Hence he says again, In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin. [Prov. 10, 19] Hence the Psalmist bears witness, saying, Let not a man full of words be established upon the earth; but the worth of a true sentence is lost, when it is not delivered under the keeping of discretion. [Ps. 140, 11. Vulg.] Thus it is a certain truth, that ‘a man full of words cannot be justified,’ but a good thing is not well said, because there is no heed taken to whom it is spoken. For a true sentence against the wicked, if it is aimed at the virtue of the good, loses its own virtue, and bounds back with blunted point, in proportion as that is strong which it hits. But that the wicked cannot hear good words with patience, and that wherein they neglect the amending of their life, they brace themselves up to words of rejoinder, Zophar plainly instructs us.
[AD 398] Didymus the Blind on Job 11:1-2