Job’s three friends are Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite (Job 2:11). They come together to show sympathy and comfort him after hearing about his trouble (Job 2:11).
In Job 2:11, three men identified as Job’s friends hear about the calamity that has struck him. Each travels from his own home region, and their names and origins are listed. They coordinate their actions ahead of time, agreeing to meet and go together. This verse follows the opening narrative where Job’s losses and physical affliction are reported and where his immediate household responses are shown. The focus now shifts from Job and his wife to outsiders who respond to the news.
Job 2:11 introduces three named friends as real characters in the story: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They hear reliable news that severe harm has come upon Job (“all this evil,” in the sense of disaster) and respond by traveling from their own regions to be with him.
A common mistake is to treat this as trivia. Names, places, numbers, and sequence details often carry memory, covenant identity, or narrative movement in the biblical story.
Start with Job 2:11, then read the surrounding section so the answer stays connected to the passage's flow.
11Now when Job`s three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came 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 to comfort him.