From the Lord’s condemnation of Job’s visitors, we learn much about how to comfort those suffering crises of faith. We learn that it does not help to have all the “right” answers if we do not speak the truth in love. (See Eph. 4:5.) With good cause Job complains to Eliphaz: “To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend.” (Job 6:14.)

We also learn that we risk divine displeasure when we cease to comfort and start to accuse. The Prophet Joseph Smith warned that those who see suffering come upon others must “judge not.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 162–63.)

From the failure of Job’s comforters, we further learn that the only abiding comfort must come from the Comforter. Job doesn’t need a carefully argued treatise solving the philosophical problem of evil. He needs a renewed witness that God has not forsaken him.

Sometimes, even having the right answers isn’t enough. Thus, Job’s fourth and final comforter, Elihu, utters speeches echoing sentiments that later issue from the whirlwind. Yet young Elihu’s words have no impact on Job. Evidently who speaks matters as much as, if not more, than what is said. Apart from what the Lord says, the fact that he speaks to Job at all fulfills Job’s deepest need—to be reassured that God has not forsaken him.

To our human witness as comforters, testifying of the ultimate goodness of God, must be added the witness of the Spirit that the Lord keeps company with the afflicted—that he loves us still, even now, in our desperation. Only the Lord can confirm his continuing love, through the voice of the only unfailing comforter—His Comforter.

Also at issue is Job’s relationship with his dogmatic comforters. While Job could have—and should have—received true comfort from his friends (see Mosiah 18:9), what he received instead was glib explanations about why they think he suffers. Job rejects their pious counsel that he accept his calamities as punishment for sin. To accept their heartless pieties, Job would have to confess that he feels deserving of his afflictions—which he does not, and should not, feel. Instead, he stoutly maintains that, weighed on the scales of justice, his suffering is disproportionate to any sin that could be laid to his charge. (See Job 31:4–40.)

Repeatedly, he cries out for an encounter with the Lord. He doesn’t want theology, he wants theophany. Job begs God to come into the dock so that he might prove his own innocence. (See Job 16:21; Job 23:3–4; Job 31:35.) Job vows to entrust his life into the hands of God, who prefers honesty to hypocrisy: “Let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will. …

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.

“He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.” (Job 13:13, 15–16.)

We sense Job’s powerful integrity and genuine depth of feeling for the Lord—qualities seemingly absent from his coldly “correct” friends. Yet we also sense a measure of pride, even arrogance, that he, Job, a mere man, was prosecuting a case against the Almighty. No wonder Job stands condemned by the Lord in the final chapters of the book as one “that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.” (Job 38:2.)

But while Job is condemned for attempting to instruct the Lord (see Job 40:2), he is also approved in the end. His comforters, by contrast, are only condemned. The Lord says: “My wrath is kindled against thee [Eliphaz], and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7.)

How has Job spoken the thing that is right? Perhaps it has been his speeches of repentance. Or perhaps it has been his refusal to pretend he understood what he didn’t understand; he has kept his integrity. He has steadfastly looked to the Lord for answers, pleading for revelation rather than accepting the pat human answers of his comforters.