1 Then Job answered, 2 "Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation. 3 Allow me, and I also will speak; After I have spoken, mock on. 4 As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn't I be impatient? 5 Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth. 6 When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh. 7 "Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power? 8 Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes. 9 Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. 10 Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don't miscarry. 11 They send forth their little ones like a flock. Their children dance. 12 They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe. 13 They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol. 14 They tell God, 'Depart from us, for we don't want to know about your ways. 15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?' 16 Behold, their prosperity is not 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 on them, that God distributes sorrows in his anger? 18 How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away? 19 You say, 'God lays up his iniquity for his children.' Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it. 20 Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 21 For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off? 22 "Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high? 23 One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. 24 His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened. 25 Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good. 26 They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them. 27 "Behold, I know your thoughts, the devices with which you would wrong me. 28 For you say, 'Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?' 29 Haven't you asked wayfaring men? Don't you know their evidences, 30 that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, That they are led forth to the day of wrath? 31 Who shall declare his way to his face? Who shall repay him what he has done? 32 Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men shall keep watch over the tomb. 33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him. All men shall draw after him, as there were innumerable before him. 34 So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?"
Job expresses himself as puzzled by the dispensations of Divine Providence, because of the unequal distribution of temporal goods; he shows that wicked men often live long, prosper in their families, in their flocks, and in all their substance, and yet live in defiance of God and sacred things, vv. 1-16. At other times their prosperity is suddenly blasted, and they and their families come to ruin, Job 21:17-21. God, however, is too wise to err; and he deals out various lots to all according to his wisdom: some come sooner, others later, to the grave: the strong and the weak, the prince and the peasant, come to a similar end in this life; but the wicked are reserved for a day of wrath, Job 21:22-33. He charges his friends with falsehood in their pretended attempts to comfort him, Job 21:34.
INTRODUCTION TO JOB 21
This chapter contains Job's reply to Zophar's preceding discourse, in which, after a preface exciting attention to what he was about to say, Job 21:1; he describes by various instances the prosperity of wicked men, even of the most impious and atheistical, and which continues with them as long as they live, contrary to what Zophar had asserted in Job 20:5, Job 21:7; as for himself, he disapproved of such wicked men as much as any, and owns that destruction comes upon them sooner or later, and on their posterity also, Job 21:16; but as God is a God of knowledge, and needs no instruction from any, and is a sovereign Being, he deals with men in different ways; some die in great ease, and peace, and prosperity, and others in bitterness and distress, but both are alike brought to the dust, Job 21:22; and whereas he was aware of their censures of him, and their objections to what he had said, he allows that the wicked are reserved to the day of destruction, which is future, and in the mean while lie in the grave, where all must follow; yet they are not repaid or rewarded in this life, that remains to be done in another world, Job 21:27; and concludes, that their consolation with respect to him was vain, and falsehood was in their answers, Job 21:34.
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