Zophar’s second speech
20
📚Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said, 2 📚“Therefore my troubled thoughts compel me to answer, and so I make haste to speak.
3 📚I have heard the rebuke that reproaches me, and my understanding spirit causes me to answer.
20:3 Job’s friends slander him and heap dishonor on him, but when he gives a comparatively mild rebuke to them (Job 19:28-29) they are very much upset and offended.⚜
4 📚“Do you not know from olden times, since man 📖 was placed on earth,
5 📚That the triumph of the wicked is brief, and the joy of the hypocrite is only for a moment?
6 📚Though his arrogance mounts up to the heavens, and his head reaches to the clouds,
7 📚Yet he will perish forever like his own dung. Those who had seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’
8 📚He will fly away like a dream, and will not be found. Yes, he will be chased away like a vision of the night,
9 📚And the eye which saw him will see him no longer; nor will his place any longer set eyes on him.
10 📚His children will seek the favour of the poor, and his hands will give back his wealth.
11 📚His bones are filled with youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust.
12 📚“Though wickedness is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue,
13 📚Though he spares it and does not forsake it, but still keeps it in his mouth,
14 📚Yet his food in his stomach will turn sour, and become like the venom of cobras inside him.
15 📚He has swallowed down riches, but will vomit them up again. God will expel them from his stomach.
16 📚He will suck the poison of cobras; the viper’s tongue will kill him.
17 📚He will not see the streams, the rivers flowing with honey and cream.
18 📚That for which he laboured he will not give back, and will not swallow it down. He will get no enjoyment from the riches obtained from his trading.
19 📚Because he has oppressed and abandoned the poor, because he has violently taken away a house which he did not build,
20 📚“Surely he will feel no quietness in his inner being. He will not keep anything he desires.
21 📚Nothing will be left for him to eat, so his well-being will not last.
22 📚In the fullness of his abundance, he will experience distress. The hand of all the miserable will come against him.
23 📚As he is about to fill his stomach, God will hurl on him the fury of his wrath, will rain it down on him while he is eating.
24 📚He will flee from the iron weapon; a bronze bow will pierce him.
25 📚It is drawn out; it comes out of the back; yes, the glittering point goes through his gall bladder. Terrors seize him.
26 📚Total darkness lies in wait for his treasures. An unfanned fire will consume him. It will go ill with him who is left in his tent.
27 📚The heavens will reveal his iniquity, and the earth will rise up against him.
28 📚The increase in his house will depart, and his possessions will flow away in the day of God’s wrath.
29 📚This is the allotment of a wicked man from God, the inheritance God appoints for him”.
20:4-29 Nothing Job says can overturn the false doctrine of his friends. Their minds are not ready to receive any new ideas. They are convinced they are wise men who have the answers to life’s problems. But they cannot even begin to understand a man like Job. In this second speech of Zophar he strikes the same note as in his first speech (Job 11:6, 10-12). But now, as he describes the kind of man he thinks Job is, his words are much sharper than before. He says that the history of man proves his doctrine (vs 4,5). The wicked may prosper for a time (as Job did), but he will certainly be destroyed (vs 6-11); his ill-gotten gain will perish with him (vs 12-22); God Himself will rise up against him, will expose his guilt and bring him to ruin (vs 23-29).
In this venomous speech Zophar indirectly is calling Job wicked (v 5), proud (v 6), a lover of evil (vs 12,13), an oppressor of the poor (v 19), and a covetous man (v 20). Zophar has no evidence at all that Job is like this. It is his false doctrine that assures him that Job must be like this (note on Job 18:5-21).⚜