What Friends Are For
Now when Job’s three friends heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, they came, each one from his own place—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him. Job 2:11 NASB
Sympathize/ Comfort – “It’s just too much to bear,” you say as you shake your head back and forth. Have you done that? Sat with someone who is suffering and have nothing else to say except the head gesture of shared grief. That’s what this verb means—nûd. To wander; have compassion on.
nûd basically denotes a going back and forth. It is applied to a physical movement or an attitude. Cf. Arabaic nāda“move to and fro” (as the head of one falling asleep). The two connotations of our word are evidenced by its parallels and synonyms. First, our word is parallel to nḥm (Isa 51:19) “to comfort,” “be sorry for someone or one’s self,” and ḥml (Jer 15:5) “to spare,” “have compassion on.” . . This to and fro movement is also typical of the nodding of one’s head “as a sign of pity that sympathizes with one and recognizes the magnitude of the evil” (KD; Ps 69:20 [H 21]). Whether or not this action was always understood when this root appears is uncertain, but the attitude so symbolized is.[1]
We have the word, in English and Hebrew, but the word really isn’t enough, is it? Expressing our sympathy takes more than words. Hallmark doesn’t quite do it. What we need is a shared heart, a deep connection that doesn’t need words. What we need is the physical and emotional manifestation of love. Do you imagine that someone could express this kind of sympathy for your plight without saying a thing? I hope so, because that experience is much like God’s expression of sympathy for our pitiful condition. Oh, it’s nice that He says something about it, but in the end, it’s not the words that matter.
Job’s friends are described with two verbs. nûd we know now. The second is nāḥam (be sorry, repent, regret, be comforted, comfort).[2] Wilson comments:
The origin of the root seems to reflect the idea of “breathing deeply,” hence the physical display of one’s feelings, usually sorrow, compassion, or comfort. . . This Hebrew word was well known to every pious Jew living in exile as he recalled the opening words of Isaiah’s “Book of Consolation,” naḥămû naḥămû ʿammî “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (Isa 40:1). The same word occurs in Ps 23:4, where David says of his heavenly Shepherd, “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”[3]
It takes little reflection to realize that “comfort” is also an inadequate word. It is stripped of its true intention if it is restricted to verbal utterance. “You’ll feel better in the morning” is almost an emotional insult for it could imply that what you feel now is of no real importance, and, of course, what you feel now is of extreme importance. Real comfort isn’t verbal. It’s experiential. Isaiah’s announcement, naḥămû naḥămû ʿammî, means nothing if it doesn’t involve God’s direct, experiential restoration of the people. Adding two aspirin to a Hallmark card is not what Job’s friends intend to do. And, perhaps, neither should we.
There is only one universal human language—the language of pain—and every one of us is familiar with it. Perhaps before we bring “sympathy” and “comfort,” we should take a refresher course in pain pronouns.
Topical Index: sympathy, nûd, comfort, nāḥam, pain, Job 2:11
KD K. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament
[1] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 1319 נוּד. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 561). Moody Press.
[2] Wilson, M. R. (1999). 1344 נָחַם. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 570). Moody Press.
[3] Ibid.
“What we need is a shared heart, a deep connection that doesn’t need words. What we need is the physical and emotional manifestation of love. Do you imagine that someone could express this kind of sympathy for your plight without saying a thing? I hope so, because that experience is much like God’s expression of sympathy for our pitiful condition.” Yes, it is indeed the perception we obtain by means of our human experience.
“Real comfort isn’t verbal. It’s experiential.” Emet
“There is only one universal human language—the language of pain—and every one of us is familiar with it. Perhaps before we bring “sympathy” and “comfort,” we should take a refresher course in pain pronouns.” Amen
Yet, is there “only one universal human language”? Is there not joy as well as pain?
Human experience provides us with only one accurate realization… that of contingency.
The universe is… and the human experience of being urges upon human reason its recognition— inadequate or uncertain or subliminal as that may be— of the conscious demand of an adequate explanation for it’s existence and one’s own existence within it.
One may go so far in such consciousness to observe— from the fact that human life (and other life forms) have beginnings and endings— that the universe is a finite entity. It is thus reasonable, by extrapolation, to conclude that the universe itself had a beginning. This allows the capacity for that one to infer that there also is something prior to the contingent, that is in itself non-contingent. This realization ought to lead the reasoner to an openness about their own being— what is classically understood as a God as the non-contingent begetter of the contingent. There is, thereby, a powerfully intuitive argument for the reasonability of a God’s existence.
The experience of contingent being as a human being, whether such experience is that of pain or joy, is insufficient in itself to substantiate belief in a God who is non-contingent. A cosmological argument cannot per se apprehend the moral issues— the pain and joy, if you will— because, at best, all it can do is leave the universe open in regard to its need for a God to explain its existence.
An argument from contingency might serve well for pointing out the coherence of a Creator God, but it remains unhelpful in presenting someone with a personal God who can make sense of the various moral quandaries human beings are presented with throughout their lifespans. For this, what is required is an engagement with revelation claims about God such as is given in the testimony of witness found in the Scriptures, and through personal participation with the life experiences of humans… like Job.
For When People Ask
I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high
above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent
breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer[1]
[1] Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “For When People Ask,” in All the Honey: Poems (n.p.: Samara Press, 2023), 39.
A hand was there, stretching out to me and holding a scroll…. On it was written lamentations, weeping, and moanings…. I opened my mouth; he gave me the scroll to eat…. I ate it, and it tasted sweet as honey. (Ezekiel 2:9–10; 3:2–3)