Job's comforters

1. Three friends of Job who visited him in his affliction and offered him a way of making sense of his troubles: namely, that he was getting what he deserved. Job's friends maintained that misfortunes were sent by God as punishments for sin, and thus despite Job's apparent goodness, he must really be a terrible sinner. Job persistently disputed them, saying that God is supreme and mysterious — that God can send misfortunes to both good and wicked people and may not be second-guessed.

A “Job's comforter” is someone who apparently offers consolation to another person but actually makes the other person feel worse.

Example Sentences

Put up with her husband’s temper, put up with the critical and institutional disregard; put up, too, with Job’s comforters who could not accept that she wanted to be both Mrs. Pollock and a great artist.

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Flurry, clad in glistening yellow oilskins, met me in the yard, wearing an expression of ill-concealed exultation worthy of Job's comforters at their brightest.

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"Job's comforters" would have proven a dead failure in comparison with that effort.

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But there are people in this world, who delight to go abroad with the tidings of tribulation on their tongue, and whose chief pleasure is to act the part of Job's comforters, or, I might say, of his messengers.

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The false belief, argued so vehemently by Job's comforters, still persisted in the days of Jesus; because they asked Him, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

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