Job 21 - ESV - Bible Reading / Study Notes

Job 21

Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper

21:1 Then Job answered and said:

2   “Keep listening to my words,
    and let this be your comfort.
3   Bear with me, and I will speak,
    and after I have spoken, mock on.
4   As for me, is my complaint against man?
    Why should I not be impatient?
5   Look at me and be appalled,
    and lay your hand over your mouth.
6   When I remember, I am dismayed,
    and shuddering seizes my flesh.
7   Why do the wicked live,
    reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
8   Their offspring are established in their presence,
    and their descendants before their eyes.
9   Their houses are safe from fear,
    and no rod of God is upon them.
10   Their bull breeds without fail;
    their cow calves and does not miscarry.
11   They send out their little boys like a flock,
    and their children dance.
12   They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
    and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
13   They spend their days in prosperity,
    and in peace they go down to Sheol.
14   They say to God, ‘Depart from us!
    We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
15   What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
    And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’
16   Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
    The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
17   “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?
    That their calamity comes upon them?
    That God¹ distributes pains in his anger?
18   That they are like straw before the wind,
    and like chaff that the storm carries away?
19   You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
    Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
20   Let their own eyes see their destruction,
    and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21   For what do they care for their houses after them,
    when the number of their months is cut off?
22   Will any teach God knowledge,
    seeing that he judges those who are on high?
23   One dies in his full vigor,
    being wholly at ease and secure,
24   his pails² full of milk
    and the marrow of his bones moist.
25   Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having tasted of prosperity.
26   They lie down alike in the dust,
    and the worms cover them.
27   “Behold, I know your thoughts
    and your schemes to wrong me.
28   For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
    Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
29   Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
    and do you not accept their testimony
30   that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
    that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
31   Who declares his way to his face,
    and who repays him for what he has done?
32   When he is carried to the grave,
    watch is kept over his tomb.
33   The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
    all mankind follows after him,
    and those who go before him are innumerable.
34   How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
    There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

Footnotes

[1] 21:17 Hebrew he
[2] 21:24 The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain

Commentary

v1-3: Job, like his friends, makes an introductory comment (compare 18.2-4; 19.2-6; 20.2-4). He asks for silence once more. He perhaps treats Zophar's words as a rude interruption.

v4-6: Job is addressing his words to God, for man has no answer. These are deep issues, and affects him seriously, "I am terrified; trembling seizes my body", not because of the physical suffering, but because of what he was thinking about.

v7-15: Job's response blatantly contradicts his friends' opinions, especially Zophar's words in chapter 20. The wicked, even though they reject God's involvement in their lives, do prosper in this life. These words are truer to our experience than his friends' words.

v16: Job's personal commitment. He stands apart from the human wisdom that would reject God's ways, and seek prosperity solely by human aims and strength.

v17-21: Job's observation is that the wicked do not have their lives snuffed out in their prime of life. They miss out on calamity, they are not judged like straw in the wind. The common proverb is true, "God stores up a man's punishment for his sons." Job finds this unjust, since the father avoids the due reward for his deeds, such that he becomes selfish, and fails to be concerned for his family.

v22-26: God's ways are beyond understanding. We do not know why things happen as they do. Death is certain, whatever precedes it; we all lie down "alike" in the dust. Job follows the writer of Ecclesiastes in commenting on the apparent unfairness of life.

v27-33: Job argues that his friends did not test their 'theology' by observation. Their words have to be true for the great man and the wicked, for those near and far. They have failed to explain why the wicked does not have a day of wrath in this life.

v34: Since Job's friends had omitted words of eternity, they brought only empty words.