Job Chapter 21

From The Open Bible Project

21:1 Then Job answered,

21:2 "Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation.

• (a) Your diligent marking of my words will be to me a great consolation.

21:3 Allow me, and I also will speak; After I have spoken, mock on.

21:4 As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn't I be impatient?

• (b) As though he would say, I do not talk with man but with God, who will not answer me, and therefore my mind must be troubled.

21:5 Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth.

• (c) He charges them as though they were not able to comprehend his feeling of God’s judgment, and exhorts them therefore to silence.

21:6 When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh.

21:7 "Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?

• (d) Job proves against his adversaries that God does not punish the wicked immediately, but often gives them long life and prosperity, so we must not judge God just or unjust by the things that appear to our eyes.

21:8 Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes.

21:9 Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.

21:10 Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don't miscarry.

21:11 They send forth their little ones like a flock. Their children dance.

• (e) They have healthy children and in those points he answers to that which Zophar alleged before.

21:12 They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe.

21:13 They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to [8] Sheol [See Job Footnotes 8].

• (f) Not being tormented with long sickness.

21:14 They tell God, 'Depart from us, for we don't want to know about your ways.

• (g) They desire nothing more than to be exempt from all subjection that they should bear to God, thus Job shows his adversaries, that if they reason only by that which is seen by common experience the wicked who hate God are better dealt withal than they who love him.

21:15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?'

21:16 Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

• (h) It is not their own, but God only lends it to them.
• (i) God keep me from their prosperity.

21:17 "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?

21:18 How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?

21:19 You say, 'God lays up his iniquity for his children.' Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.

21:20 Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

• (k) When God recompenses his wickedness, he will know that his prosperity was vanity.

21:21 For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off?

21:22 "Shall any teach God knowledge, seeing he judges those who are high?

• (l) Who sends to the wicked prosperity and punishes the godly.

21:23 One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

• (m) Meaning, the wicked.

21:24 His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened.

21:25 Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good.

• (n) That is, the godly.

21:26 They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them.

• (o) As concerning their bodies: and this he speaks according to the common judgment.

21:27 "Behold, I know your thoughts, the devices with which you would wrong me.

21:28 For you say, 'Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?'

• (p) Thus they called Job’s house in derision concluding that it was destroyed because he was wicked.

21:29 Haven't you asked wayfaring men? Don't you know their evidences,

• (q) Who through long travailing have experience and tokens of it, that is, that the wicked prosper, and the godly live in affliction.

21:30 that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, That they are led forth to the day of wrath?

• (r) Though the wicked flourish here, yet God will punish him in the last day.

21:31 Who shall declare his way to his face? Who shall repay him what he has done?

• (s) Though men flatter him, and no one dares to reprove him in this world, yet death is a token that he will bring him to an account.

21:32 Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men shall keep watch over the tomb.

21:33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him. All men shall draw after him, as there were innumerable before him.

• (t) He will be glad to lie in a slimy pit, who before could not be content with a royal palace.

21:34 So how can you comfort me with nonsense, seeing that in your answers there remains only falsehood?"

• (u) Saying that the just in this world have prosperity and the wicked adversity.