Job and his friends all say God is wise and mighty. So what are they arguing about?

Job says he knows what they know: "I am not inferior to you. Yes, who doesn’t know such things as these?" (12:3), and "What you know, I know also" (13:2). On God's wisdom and power his words here stand close to theirs: Job's "With God is wisdom and might" (12:13), Eliphaz's "He takes the wise in their own craftiness" (5:13), Zophar's "Can you fathom the mystery of God?" (11:7). Where they part is what it all says about Job. Zophar had said, "Know therefore that God exacts of you less than your iniquity deserves" (11:6), and Bildad, "If you were pure and upright, surely now he would awaken for you" (8:6). Job says, "The just, the blameless man is a joke" (12:4), and "The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure" (12:6). In the next chapter he says to them, "But you are forgers of lies" (13:4), and "Will you speak unrighteously for God, and talk deceitfully for him?" (13:7). The book gives its word on the friends at the end (42:7), without saying which of their words it has in view, and the LORD questions Job too (38:2). These notes set the verses side by side and don't decide between them.