Job’s reply
21
But Job answered and said,2 📚“Listen carefully to my words, and let this be the consolation you give. 3 📚Bear with me so that I can speak; and after I have spoken, mock on.
21:1-3 How can Job listen to such wild accusations and then reply to them? See Jam 5:11.⚜
4 📚“As for me, is my complaint to man? And if it were, why should I not be impatient? 5 📚Look at me and be astonished, and lay your hand over your mouth. 6 📚Even as I remember I am afraid, and trembling seizes my body. 7 📚Why do the wicked live on, becoming old; yes, becoming mighty in power? 8 📚Their children are established in their sight, with them, and their offspring before their eyes. 9 📚Their houses are safe from fear, and the rod of God does not come on them.
10 📚Their bull does not fail to breed; their cow has its calves without miscarriage.
11 📚They send out their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.
12 📚They take the tambourine and harp and rejoice at the sound of the flute 📖.
13 📚They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave 📖.
14 📚Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us, for we do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
15 📚Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we have if we pray to him?’
16 📚See, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
17 📚“How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their destruction come upon them, the sorrows God distributes in his anger?
18 📚How often are they like straws before the wind, and like chaff that a storm carries away?
19 📚It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of a man’s iniquity for his children.’ Let him repay him, so that he will know it.
20 📚Let his eyes see his destruction, and let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 📚For what care does he have about his household after him, when in the number of his months he is cut off?
22 📚“Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since he judges those on high?
23 📚One dies in his full strength, being completely at ease and quiet.
24 📚His chest 📖 bulges with fat, and the marrow of his bones is moist.
25 📚Another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, never having eaten with pleasure.
26 📚They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.
27 📚“Look, I know your thoughts, and the schemes by which you would wrong me.
28 📚For you say, ‘Where is the house of the nobleman, and where is the tent where the wicked lived?’
29 📚Have you not asked travelers on the way? Do you not understand the indications they give?
30 📚For the wicked are reserved for the day of destruction. They will be brought out on the day of wrath 📖.
31 📚Who declares his ways to his face? And who repays him for what he has done?
32 📚Yet he will be brought to the grave, and will remain in the tomb.
33 📚The clods of the valley will be pleasant to him. Everyone will follow him, just as innumerable ones have gone before him 📖.
34 📚How then can you comfort me with vain words, since your answers contain falsehood?”
21:4-34 Here Job undertakes to show that the doctrine of his friends is false. It does not at all happen to the wicked as Zophar, Bildad, and Eliphaz say (Job 15:20-30; 18:5-21; 20:21-29).
In vs 4-7 Job says he is terrified, not because the wicked are punished on this earth, but because they are not. And he, a man who has lived a righteous life, is, he thinks, being punished. So his complaint is not against men but against God’s way of dealing with men. The wicked, he says, live on to a ripe old age, their children prosper and are happy, no rod of God comes on them.
In vs 8-12 Job thinks of the happiness of the children of the wicked (and doubtless contrasts this with the sad loss of his own children). The wicked, after a long and pleasant life, die suddenly without pain and suffering (v 13). They are so evil they do not want God and refuse to pray to Him (vs 14-16). But they rarely experience the kind of calamities that have come on Job (vs 17,18). Job’s friends suggest that the sins of evil men may be punished in their children (Job 5:4; 20:10). In vs 19-21 Job says this would not be just.
Job tells his friends they should not try to teach God about judgment, but should learn from the facts. And the facts are that God’s judgments are very mysterious; whether a man is good or bad doesn’t seem to have anything to do with whether he enjoys prosperity (vs 22-27). Job’s friends try to make him out to be a terrible sinner. But they ignore the facts in order to defend their idea (vs 27,28). Job says that their experience is confined to their own little circle, that even by asking travelers from other places they could learn the truth (vs 29-33). The truth is, a wicked man is sometimes spared when disasters occur in a place, and goes peacefully to the grave. Multitudes both before and after go in the same way. If Job’s friends deny this fact they are speaking nonsense and lies (v 34. See what Solomon says in Eccl 7:15).⚜