Charles Ellicott Commentary Job 13

I am not inferior unto you. — I fall not short of you. But it is this very sense of the inscrutableness of God’s dealings that makes him long to come face to face with God, and to reason with Him on the first principles of His action. As it is manifestly the traditionally orthodox position that his friends assume, it is refreshing to find that there may be some truth spoken for God by what is not so reckoned, and that more ultimate truth may exist in honest doubt than is sometimes found in the profession of a loosely-held creed. So the Laureate:

“There lives more truth in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

Ye are forgers of lies. —He now retorts to 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.

O that ye would altogether hold your peace! is singularly like the sentiment of Proverbs 17:28. Their wisdom will consist in listening to his wisdom rather than displaying their own folly.

Will you speak wickedly for God? — And now, in these verses, he expresses a sublime truth, which shows how truly he had attained to the true understanding of God. For he declares that He, who is no respecter of persons, desires no favour to be shown to Himself, and that in seeking to show Him favour, they will greatly damage their own cause. For He is a God of truth, and by Him, words as well as actions are weighed, and therefore nothing that is not true can avail anyone with Him.

As one man mocketh another. —As one man, with mingled flattery and deception, seeks to impose upon another.