Friends

A friend is more than a companion at the table. The vocabulary gathers around a knot of bonds — soul knit to soul, covenant kept, words shared in confidence, presence sustained through trouble — and the literature returns again and again to a single test: does the friend remain when things turn bad. The portrait moves between high examples of constancy, hard wisdom about how friendships are made and broken, named instances of betrayal, and the use of the title for Yahweh and for Christ in his bond with those he loves.

The Word and the Bond

Friendship is described as a binding of inward life. When Jonathan first hears David, "the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1Sa 18:1), and the bond is sealed with an oath repeated for the love he had to him (1Sa 20:17). The same register reaches into wisdom: "A companion loves at all times; And a brother is born for adversity" (Pr 17:17), and "there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Pr 18:24). Two are better than one because if they fall the one will lift up his partner, and woe to him who is alone when he falls and has no one to lift him up (Ec 4:9-10). Sirach catches the same thought: a faithful friend is "a solid friend" and has no price, "a bundle of life" for whoever finds him (Sir 6:14-16).

Wisdom on Making and Keeping Friends

The wisdom literature treats friendship as something that takes care to acquire and care to keep. "A sweet mouth grows a friend" (Sir 6:5), but the counsel that follows immediately narrows the circle: "Let the men who greet you [saying], Peace, be many; But the owner of your secret, one among a thousand" (Sir 6:6). A friend is to be tried before he is trusted — "Have you gotten a friend? Get him in trial; And do not be in a hurry to rely on him" (Sir 6:7). Once gained, he is not to be exchanged "for a price" or lent "for the gold of Ophir" (Sir 7:18), nor forsaken when he becomes old in favor of someone newer (Sir 9:10). An old friend, like wine, comes into his goodness with age. "Iron sharpens iron; So a man sharpens the countenance of his fellow man" (Pr 27:17).

The same body of wisdom sets the duty plainly: do not slander a friend or be double-tongued with him (Sir 5:14); do not exchange enmity for him (Sir 5:15); do good to a friend before death takes the chance away (Sir 14:13); do not forget him in the time of conflict, nor forsake him when the spoil is taken (Sir 37:6). Even a quarrel is not the end: "Even if you draw the sword against a friend, Do not despair, for there is a way out" (Sir 22:21), and an opened mouth has "a [way of] reconciliation" — though "reproach, arrogance, betrayal of a secret, and a deceitful blow" are the wounds from which "every friend will depart" (Sir 22:22). Reproof is a friend's office, but rebuke is not for the wine-banquet (Sir 31:31), and reproach scares a friend off as stones scatter birds (Sir 22:20).

Secrets are the structural pressure point. "He who reveals secrets destroys trust, And will find no friend to his soul" (Sir 27:16). The friendship of a neighbor is undone like a bird released from the hand, not to be caught again (Sir 27:18-20). Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but "the kisses of an enemy are profuse" (Pr 27:6).

The Fair-Weather Friend

Set against the faithful friend stands a recognized type — the friend who keeps company in good times and disappears in bad. "A friend will not be known when things are good; And an enemy will not be hidden when things are bad" (Sir 12:8); "When things are good for a man, even an enemy is a companion; And when things are bad for him, even a companion separates" (Sir 12:9). Sirach lays out the type at length: "There is a friend who turns into an enemy" (Sir 6:9); "There is a friend who is company at a table, But will not be found in the day of evil" (Sir 6:10); "When things are good for you, he is like you; But when things are bad for you, he will despise you" (Sir 6:11); "If evil overtakes you, he will turn against you; And he will hide himself from your face" (Sir 6:12). "Every friend says: 'I have a friend,' But there is a friend [who is] a friend in name [only]" (Sir 37:1) — and an "evil friend [is he who] looks to the table, But in time of stress stands aloof" (Sir 37:4). Trouble serves as the test: "While he needs you, he will be with you; And he will flatter you, and laugh with you, and make you promises" (Sir 13:6); but "as long as he profits, he will deceive you" (Sir 13:7).

The Psalms give the same observation as lament. "My friends and my companions stand aloof from my plague; And my kinsmen stand far off" (Ps 38:11). "Lover and companion you have put far from me, My acquaintances into darkness" (Ps 88:18). "You have put my acquaintances far from me; You have made me disgusting to them" (Ps 88:8). "Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, Yes, to my neighbors exceedingly, And a fear to my acquaintance: Those who saw me outside fled from me" (Ps 31:11). "Look at [my] right hand, and see; For there is no man who knows me: Refuge has failed me; No man cares for my soul" (Ps 142:4). Job knows the same desertion: "My companions scoff at me" (Job 16:20); "All my familiar friends are disgusted by me, And they whom I loved are turned against me" (Job 19:19).

Examples of True Friendship

Against the type of the fair-weather friend, named figures stand as examples. Jonathan and David are the central pair: their souls knit together (1Sa 18:1), their love sworn (1Sa 20:17), and grieved by David in lament — "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan: Very pleasant you have been to me: Your love to me was wonderful, Passing the love of women" (2Sa 1:26). Ruth's vow to Naomi belongs to the same register: "Don't entreat me to leave you, and to return from following after you, for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people will be my people, and your God my God" (Ru 1:16). Hushai is named as "David's friend" in the flight from Absalom (2Sa 15:37), and Ittai of Gath swears to follow his lord "to death or to life" (2Sa 15:21). Hiram of Tyre "was ever a friend of David" (1Ki 5:1). Elisha refuses to let Elijah go on alone, "As Yahweh lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you" (2Ki 2:2).

Apostolic letters extend the pattern. Onesiphorus "often refreshed me, and wasn't ashamed of my chain" (2Ti 1:16). Epaphroditus is "my brother and coworker and fellow-soldier" (Php 2:25). Prisca and Aquila "laid down their own necks for my soul" (Ro 16:4). Paul thanks God on every remembrance of the Philippians "for your⁺ fellowship in furtherance of the good news from the first day until now" (Php 1:3,5), and looks for mutual comfort "each of us by the other's faith, both yours⁺ and mine" (Ro 1:12). The fellowship of believers is itself a friendship: "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another" (1Jn 1:7), and "those who feared Yahweh spoke one with another; and Yahweh listened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him" (Mal 3:16).

False Friends

Scripture also names the failures, often by name. The chief cupbearer forgot Joseph after Joseph had read his dream — "Yet the chief cupbearer didn't remember Joseph, but forgot him" (Gen 40:23). Delilah turned her access to Samson's heart into a Philistine bribe: she pressed him daily until he told her all his heart, then "she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines" with the silver in their hand, made him sleep on her knees, and gave him over (Jud 16:15-21; cf. Jud 16:18-19). The Levite's concubine "prostituted against him, and went away from him to her father's house" (Jud 19:1-2). David, dying, charges Solomon to settle accounts with Joab for the blood of Abner and Amasa — men struck down "in peace" — and "don't let his hoar head go down to Sheol in peace" (1Ki 2:5-6). David himself wrote the letter that delivered Uriah to death: "Set⁺ Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire⁺ from him, that he may be struck, and die" (2Sa 11:14-17). Ahithophel, "David's counselor," joined Absalom's conspiracy from his own city of Giloh (2Sa 15:12).

The Psalter sets the same betrayals to lament. "Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, Who ate of my bread, Has lifted up his heel against me" (Ps 41:9). "For it is not an enemy who reproached me; Or I could have borne it... But it was you, [a] common man like me, My best friend who I knew well. We took sweet counsel together; We walked in the house of God with the throng" (Ps 55:12-14). The same friend "has put forth his hands against such as were at peace with him: He has profaned his covenant. His mouth was smooth as butter, But his heart was war" (Ps 55:20-21). Around David's accusers in another psalm: "I behaved myself as though it had been my companion or my brother: I bowed down mourning, as one who bewails his mother. But in my adversity they rejoiced" (Ps 35:14-15). Micah names the principle: "Don't trust⁺ in a companion; don't put⁺ confidence in a best friend" (Mi 7:5), because "a man's enemies are the men of his own house" (Mi 7:6).

A particular sub-form of treachery is the friend's kiss. Absalom won over Israel by it — "when any man came near to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took hold of him, and kissed him" (2Sa 15:5). Joab took Amasa "by the beard with his right hand to kiss him" while striking him with the sword in the other (2Sa 20:9-10). And in the garden, the betrayer "came to him, and says, Rabbi; and kissed him" (Mr 14:45) — "Judas, do you deliver up the Son of Man with a kiss?" (Lu 22:48). Jesus had foretold him at the supper: "one of you⁺ will deliver me up" (Jn 13:21), and the woe is pronounced over the man "through whom he is delivered up" (Lu 22:22). Even apart from Judas, the disciples scattered: "And they all left him, and fled" (Mr 14:50); "the hour comes, yes, has come, that you⁺ will be scattered, every man to his own, and will leave me alone" (Jn 16:32). Paul knew it too: "all who are in Asia turned away from me" (2Ti 1:15); "Demas forsook me, having loved this present age" (2Ti 4:10); "At my first defense no one took my part, but all forsook me: may it not be laid to their account" (2Ti 4:16). 1 Maccabees rehearses the same pattern in political form — peaceful words spoken in deceit (1Ma 1:30; 7:10, 27), oaths broken (1Ma 6:62), conspiracies plotted "against Simon and his sons, to destroy them" (1Ma 16:13), feasts laid as ambushes (1Ma 16:15), and the verdict: "he committed a great treachery, and rendered evil for good" (1Ma 16:17).

Sirach gathers it as a sentence: "A wound in the eye makes tears flow, And a wound in the heart severs friendship" (Sir 22:19); the deceitful friend "with his lips... tarries; But with his heart, he considers deep pits" (Sir 12:16). And "from a family of betrayers, [a city] will be desolate" (Sir 16:4).

Yahweh as Friend

The title is also given upward. Abraham is "called the friend of God" (Jas 2:23), and Yahweh names him so in prayer through Jehoshaphat: "Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it to the seed of Abraham your friend forever?" (2Ch 20:7). Moses is the other named instance — "Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his companion" (Ex 33:11); "with him I will speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches" (Nu 12:8); "there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face" (De 34:10).

The mark of this friendship is constancy. "He will not fail you, neither destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers" (De 4:31); "he will not fail you, nor forsake you" (De 31:6); "I will not fail you, nor forsake you" (Jos 1:5); "he himself has said, I will never fail you, neither will I ever forsake you" (He 13:5). The same register runs through Isaiah's late chapters: "I, Yahweh, will answer them, I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them" (Is 41:17); "These things I will do, and I will not forsake them" (Is 42:16); "you will not be forgotten of me" (Is 44:21); "even to old age, I am he, and even to hoar hairs [my Speech] will carry [you⁺]" (Is 46:4); "Can a woman forget her nursing child... Yes, these may forget, yet [my Speech] will not forget you" (Is 49:15); "the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but my loving-kindness will not depart from you" (Is 54:10). "I will not leave you⁺ desolate: I come to you⁺" (Jn 14:18).

Christ and His Friends

Christ took the title for those he loves. "No longer do I call you⁺ slaves; for the slave doesn't know what his lord does: but I have called you⁺ friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you⁺" (Jn 15:15). The condition is given in the same discourse: "You⁺ are my friends, if you⁺ do the things which I command you⁺" (Jn 15:14), and the measure is given just before: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13). The narrative around the title is shaped by the same bond. Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus (Jn 11:5); at Lazarus's tomb, "Jesus wept" (Jn 11:35), and the Jews said, "Look at how he loved him!" (Jn 11:36). At the supper there reclined "in Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved" (Jn 13:23). And "having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn 13:1). Thomas's word to his fellow-disciples — "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (Jn 11:16) — sits inside that frame.

A second title belongs here. Christ's enemies call him a "friend of publicans and sinners" (Lu 7:34), and the murmurers complain that he "has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner" (Lu 19:7) and that the woman who touched him in Simon's house was a sinner (Lu 7:39). The title that hostile witnesses meant as accusation is interpreted by Paul: "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Ro 5:8) — "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (1Ti 1:15).

The Friendless

A final note runs alongside all this. The literature recognizes the state of having no friend at all. The sick man at Bethesda answers, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steps down before me" (Jn 5:7). The prodigal at the height of his hunger — "no man gave to him" (Lu 15:16). The beggar Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate "full of sores," and even the dogs came and licked his sores (Lu 16:20-21). The fool of Sirach says, "I have no friend, And my good deeds receive no thanks" (Sir 20:16), and the psalmist watches "like a sparrow That is alone on the housetop" (Ps 102:7). Against that, the apostle holds out the fellowship "one with another" of those who walk in the light (1Jn 1:7), and Christ's last word into the disciples' coming desertion: "I will not leave you⁺ desolate: I come to you⁺" (Jn 14:18).