Job's Friends

I have a Bible question. 

Before I ask this, you need to know that I have read the Bible all the way through more than a dozen times. And it wasn't until this time that I had this question. 

It's about Job's friends. 

Remember Job's friends? These are the guys who came to sit with him in the dust and ashes, while chastising him for creating his own dust and ashes and giving long, eloquent speeches about what they knew to be true about God and what Job, apparently, didn't know. Job spends a good chunk of the book that bears his name telling them what idiots they are, how foolish, how completely short-sighted and narrow-minded they are about who God is. How wrong they are. 

Here I am thousands of years later, reading these words. I know that the Bible is divinely inspired, that every word of it is useful for teaching and rebuking and training and all that. That God has given us these words because He wants us to know them, to be able to live by them, to discover more of who He is - His character and His heart and His love. 

So here's my Bible question: 

Am I, in 2026, supposed to take Job's friends seriously? 

That is - are the words recorded as being spoken by Job's friends words that reveal the true nature and the heart of God somehow, do they speak truth that is important to my faith, or am I supposed to be more like Job and read these words and know that's not quite true? 

Are Job's friends truth-tellers, even if that truth is not complete, or are they false prophets and distractions from what I should be learning about God? 

Elihu says, "I am telling you nothing but the truth," (36: 4) but Job tells Elihu that's not really the truth. So should I take Elihu's words as truth...or not truth? 

Are these the things I'm supposed to know about God? Or are Job's friends a warning to me even now about the faithful-sounding things that others might say that are not true? That might try to sway me away from what I know about God? 

God Himself says they did not speak truth about Him (Job 42:7). 

I started to have these questions because every day, as I read through my Bible, I try to find one thing to write down. One note to take with me. One truth to hold onto, something that speaks to me for some reason in whatever season I'm in. As I was reading through Job recently, I had such a thing jump out at me and I said to myself, "Of course. That is something I should most definitely hold onto." 

But then, I saw that it was spoken by one of Job's friends and all of a sudden, I wondered...is it, then, actually true? Is it true because it's the Word of God and He only gives us true words? Or is it the Word of God as a cautionary tale against untrue words? 

And now, I just don't know. 

What do you think? Do you trust Job's friends? Should you trust Job's friends?