Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 20:1
Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said,
CHAPTER XX
Zophar answers Job, and largely details the wretchedness of
the wicked and the hypocrite; shows that the rejoicing of
such is short and transitory, 1-9.
That he is punished in his family and in his person, 10-14.
That he shall be stripped of his ill-gotten wealth, and shall
be in misery, though in the midst of affluence, 15-23.
He shall at last die a violent death, and his family and
property be finally destroyed, 24-29.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Then answered Zophar the Naamathite,…. Notwithstanding the sad distressed condition Job was in, an account of which is given in the preceding chapter, enough to pierce a heart of stone, notwithstanding his earnest request to his friends to have pity on him, and notwithstanding the noble confession of his faith he had made, which showed him to be a good man, and the excellent advice he gave his friends to cease persecuting him, for their own good, as well as for his peace; yet, regardless of these things, Zophar starts up and makes a reply, and attacks him with as much heat and passion, wrath and anger, as ever, harping upon the same string, and still representing Job as a wicked man and an hypocrite;
and said, as follows.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1 Then began Zophar the Naamathite, and said:
2 Therefore do my thoughts furnish me with a reply,
And indeed by reason of my feeling within me.
3 The correction of my reproach I must hear,
Nevertheless the spirit of my understanding informeth me.
4 Knowest thou this which is from everlasting,
Since man was placed upon the earth:
5 That the triumphing of the evil-doer is not long,
And the joy of the godless is but for a moment?
All modern expositors take Job 20:2 as an apology for the opposition which follows, and the majority of them consider as elliptical for , as Tremell., Piscator, and others have done, partly (but wrongly) by referring to the Rebia mugrasch. Ewald observes: “ stands without addition, because this is easily understood from the in .” But although this ellipsis is not inadmissible (comp. = , Job 34:25; , Isa 59:18), in spite of it Job 20:2 furnishes no meaning that can be accepted. Most expositors translate: ”and hence the storm within me” (thus e.g., Ewald); but the signification perturbatio animi , proposed by Schultens for , after the Arab. has , is too remote from the usage of Hebrew. Moreover, this Arab. has signifies prop. to scare, hunt, of game; not, however: to be agitated, to storm, – a signification which even the corresponding Hebr. , properare , does not support. Only a few expositors (as Umbreit, who translates: because of my storm within me) take (which occurs only this once in the book of Job) as praepos., as it must be taken in consideration of the infin. which follows (comp. Exo 9:16; Exo 20:20; 1Sa 1:6; 2Sa 10:3). Further, (only by Umbreit translated by “yet,” after the Arab. lakin , lakinna , which it never signifies in Hebr., where is not = , but = with Kametz before the tone) with that which follows is referred by several expositors to the preceding speech of Job, e.g., Hahn: “under such circumstances, if thou behavest thus;” by most, however, it is referred to Job 20:3, e.g., Ew.: ” On this account he feels called upon by his thoughts to answer, and hence his inward impulse leaves him no rest: because he hears from Job a contemptuous wounding reproof of himself.” In other words: in consequence of the reproach which Job casts upon him, especially with his threat of judgment, Zophar’s mind and feelings fall into a state of excitement, and give him an answer to which he now gives utterance. This prospective sense of may at any rate be retained, though is taken as a preposition (wherefore … and indeed on account of my inward commotion); but it is far more natural that the beginning of Zophar’s speech should be connected with the last word of Job’s. Job 20:2 may really be so understood if we connect , not with Arab. has , , to excite, to make haste (after which also Saad. and Aben-Ezra: on account of my inward hastening or urging), but with Arab. hs , to feel; in this meaning chsh is usual in all the Semitic dialects, and is even biblical also; for Ecc 2:25 is to be translated: who hath feeling (pleasure) except from Him (read )? i.e., even in pleasure man is not free, but has conditions fixed by God.
With (used as in Job 42:3) Zophar draws an inference from Job’s conduct, esp. from the turn which his last speech has taken, which, as
(Note: Thus it is to be read according to the Masoretic note, (i.e., plene, as nowhere else), which occurs in Codd., as is also attested by Kimchi in his Gramm., Moznajim, p. 8; Aben-Ezra in his Gramm., Zachoth 1, b; and the punctuator Jekuthil, in his Darche ha-Nikkud (chapter on the letters ).)
affirms, urges him involuntarily and irresistibly forward, and indeed, as he adds with Waw explic.: on account of the power of feeling dwelling in him, by which he means both his sense of truth and his moral feeling, in general the capacity of direct perception, not perception that is only attained after long reflection. On , of thoughts which, as it were, branch out, vid., on Job 4:13, and Psychol. S. 181. signifies, as everywhere, to answer, not causative, to compel to answer. is n. actionis in the sense of (Targ.), or (Ralbag), which also signifies “my feeling ( ),” and the combination is like Job 4:21; Job 6:13. Wherein the inference consists in self-evident, and proceeds from Job 20:4. In Job 20:3 expression is given to the ground of the conclusion intended in : the chastisement of my dishonour, i.e., which tends to my dishonour (comp. Isa 53:5, chastisement which conduces to our peace), I must hear (comp. on this modal signification of the future, e.g., Job 17:2); and in Job 20:3 Zophar repeats what he has said in Job 20:2, only somewhat differently applied: the spirit, this inner light (vid., Job 32:8; Psychol. S. 154, f), answers him from the perception which is peculiar to himself, i.e., out of the fulness of this perception it furnishes him with information as to what is to be thought of Job with his insulting attacks, viz., (this is the substance of the of the thoughts, and of the of the spirit), that in this conduct of Job only his godlessness is manifest. This is what he warningly brings against him, Job 20:4: knowest thou indeed (which, according to Job 41:1; 1Ki 21:19, sarcastically is equivalent to: thou surely knowest, or in astonishment: what dost thou not know?!) this from the beginning, i.e., this law, which has been in operation from time immemorial (or as Ew.: hoccine scis aeternum esse , so that is not a virtual adj., but virtual predicate-acc.), since man was placed ( infin., therefore prop., since one has placed man) upon the earth (comp. the model passage, Deu 4:32), that the exulting of the wicked is , from near, i.e., not extending far, enduring only a short time (Arab. qrb often directly signifies brevis); and the joy of the godless , only for a moment, and continuing no longer?
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Second Address of Zophar; Destruction of the Wicked. | B. C. 1520. |
1 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, 2 Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste. 3 I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my understanding causeth me to answer. 4 Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, 5 That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? 6 Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; 7 Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? 8 He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. 9 The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him.
Here, I. Zophar begins very passionately, and seems to be in a great heat at what Job had said. Being resolved to condemn Job for a bad man, he was much displeased that he talked so like a good man, and, as it should seem, broke in upon him, and began abruptly (v. 2): Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer. He takes no notice of what Job had said to move their pity, or to evidence his own integrity, but fastens upon the reproof he gave them in the close of his discourse, counts that a reproach, and thinks himself therefore obliged to answer, because Job had bidden them be afraid of the sword, that he might not seem to be frightened by his menaces. The best counsel is too often ill taken from an antagonist, and therefore usually may be well spared. Zophar seemed more in haste to speak than became a wise man; but he excuses his haste with two things:– 1. That Job had given him strong provocation (v. 3): “I have heard the check of my reproach, and cannot bear to hear it any longer.” Job’s friends, I doubt, had spirits too high to deal with a man in his low condition; and high spirits are impatient of contradiction, and think themselves affronted if all about them do not say as they say; they cannot bear a check but they call it the check of their reproach, and then they are bound in honour to return it, if not to draw upon him that gave it. 2. That his own heart gave him a strong instigation. His thoughts caused him to answer (v. 2), for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks; but he fathers the instigation (v. 3) upon the spirit of his understanding: that indeed should cause us to answer; we should rightly apprehend a thing and duly consider it before we speak of it; but whether it did so here or no is a question. Men often mistake the dictates of their passion for the dictates of their reason, and therefore think they do well to be angry.
II. Zophar proceeds very plainly to show the ruin and destruction of wicked people, insinuating that because Job was destroyed and ruined he was certainly a wicked man and a hypocrite. Observe,
1. How this doctrine is introduced, v. 4, where he appeals, (1.) To Job’s own knowledge and conviction: “Knowest thou not this? Canst thou be ignorant of a truth so plain? Or canst thou doubt of a truth which has been confirmed by the suffrages of all mankind?” Those know little who do not know that the wages of sin is death. (2.) To the experience of all ages. It was known of old, since man was placed upon the earth; that is, ever since man was made he has had this truth written in his heart, that the sin of sinners will be their ruin; and ever since there were instances of wickedness (which there were soon after man was placed on the earth) there were instances of the punishments of it, witness the exclusions of Adam and Cain. When sin entered into the world death entered with it: all the world knows that evil pursues sinners, whom vengeance suffers not to live (Acts xxviii. 4), and subscribes to that (Isa. iii. 11), Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, sooner or later.
2. How it is laid down (v. 5): The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. Observe, (1.) He asserts the misery, not only of those who are openly wicked and profane, but of hypocrites, who secretly practice wickedness under a show and profession of religion, because such a wicked man he looked upon Job to be; and it is true that a form of godliness, if it be made use of for a cloak of maliciousness, does but make bad worse. Dissembled piety is double iniquity, and the ruin that attends it will be accordingly. The hottest place in hell will be the portion of hypocrites, as our Saviour intimates, Matt. xxiv. 51. (2.) He grants that wicked men may for a time prosper, may be secure and easy, and very merry. You may see them in triumph and joy, triumphing and rejoicing in their wealth and power, their grandeur and success, triumphing and rejoicing over their poor honest neighbours whom they vex and oppress: they feel no evil, they fear none. Job’s friends were loth to own, at first, that wicked people might prosper at all (ch. iv. 9), until Job proved it plainly (Job 9:24; Job 12:6), and now Zophar yields it; but, (3.) He lays it down for a certain truth that they will not prosper long. Their joy is but for a moment, and will quickly end in endless sorrow. Though he be ever so great, and rich, and jovial, the hypocrite will be humbled, and mortified, and made miserable.
3. How it is illustrated, v. 6-9. (1.) He supposes his prosperity to be very high, as high as you can imagine, v. 6. It is not his wisdom and virtue, but his worldly wealth or greatness, that he accounts his excellency, and values himself upon. We will suppose that to mount up to the heavens, and, since his spirit always rises with his condition, you may suppose that with it his head reaches to the clouds. He is every way advanced; the world has done the utmost it can for him. He looks down upon all about him with disdain, while they look up to him with admiration, envy, or fear. We will suppose him to bid fair for a universal monarchy. And, though he cannot but have made himself many enemies before he arrived to this pitch of prosperity, yet he thinks himself as much out of the reach of their darts as if he were in the clouds. (2.) He is confident that his ruin will accordingly be very great, and his fall the more dreadful for his having risen so high: He shall perish for ever, v. 7. His pride and security were the certain presages of his misery. This will certainly be true of all impenitent sinners in the other world; they shall be undone, for ever undone. But Zophar means his ruin in this world; and indeed sometimes notorious sinners are remarkably cut off by present judgments; they have reason enough to fear what Zophar here threatens even the triumphant sinner with. [1.] A shameful destruction: He shall perish like his own dung or dunghill, so loathsome is he to God and all good men, and so willing will the world be to part with him, Psa 119:119; Isa 66:24. [2.] A surprising destruction. He will be brought into desolation in a moment (Ps. lxxiii. 19), so that those about him, that saw him but just now, will ask, “Where is he? Could he that made so great a figure vanish and expire so suddenly?” [3.] A swift destruction, v. 8. He shall fly away upon the wings of his own terrors, and be chased away by the just imprecations of all about him, who would gladly get rid of him. [4.] An utter destruction. It will be total; he shall go away like a dream, or vision of the night, which was a mere phantasm, and, whatever in it pleased the fancy, it is quite gone, and nothing of it remains but what serves us to laugh at the folly of. It will be final (v. 9): The eye that saw him, and was ready to adore him, shall see him no more, and the place he filled shall no more behold him, having given him an eternal farewell when he went to his own place, as Judas, Acts i. 25.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JOB – CHAPTER 20
ZOPHAR’S SECOND ADDRESS TO JOB
Verses 1-29:
Verses 1-3 begin Zophar the Naamathite’s second direct address to the cause of Job’s loss and afflictions. He asserts that he has calmly listened to Job’s address, considered what he had said, and thoughtfully and deliberately prepared himself to answer Job, coming directly to the point, Job 4:13. He stated that he had heard Job’s scolding, castigation, or reproof of Job 19:29 and would now answer with calm and rational spirit.
Verses 4-6 inquires of Job if he were not aware, from the way he acted and the things he had said, that the triumph of the wicked (such as he was) and the joy of the hypocrite or ungodly one, such as he appeared to be, was short, temporary, or fleeting, Exo 15:9-10; Psa 37:35-36; Jdg 16:21; Jdg 16:30; Ezr 5:11-12; Act 12:22-23; He added that though the ungodly hypocrite had been high and exalted to the heavens, he would have his head fall back below the clouds, by Divine judgment. While the concept was true the conclusion and inference and insinuation against Job was untrue, because his suffering was not because of any ungodly or hypocritical living, but for the glory of God, Job 2:6-10; Jas 4:12-16. See also Isa 14:13; Oba 1:3-4.
Verse 7 states that the ungodly, pride-filled hypocrite who had walked with his head in the clouds, exalting himself to heaven, as he suggested Job had done, would surely perish like dung of the barnyard or of the field of flowers, until his former acquaintance would ask, where is he now? Psa 83:10; Psalms 1 Kg 14:10.
Verses 8, 9 assert further that such a person will fly away, drift or vanish out of sight, so that the eye can not focus on or see him any more, like a vision that has come and gone forever; Neither shall he be found in his former state on earth any more, Psa 90:10; Isa 29:7; Psa 73:20; Psa 103:16; Job 28:7; Job 7:10.
Verse 10 states that his children (Job’s grandchildren) near relatives who survived, would be slaves to the poor, restore to them their goods, try to please those whom Job had defrauded to secure his wealth, as retribution for sins of their forefather, Exo 20:4-5. Zophar was dogmatically certain, though wrongly so, that Job was a prime sinner who was justly suffering and would cause his children after him to suffer in righteous retribution for his sins, Psa 25:7.
Verse 11 recounts Zophar’s direct charge that Job’s bones were full of, infected because of, the sins of his youth, for no other reason. Though he judged unjustly, without knowing the facts; He certified that these sins would hound him into the dust of death, Job 17:16; Job 19:20; Psa 90:8; Job 13:26; Jer 3:25; Rev 22:11.
Verses 12.14 declare that though Job had hidden wickedness sweetly, deceitfully, in his mouth, under his tongue, rolled it over in his mouth smoothly, as a wine taster rolls and swigs wine slowly for the best of taste, holding it long before he drinks it, yet the meat or food in his bowels is turned, (soured) like bitter gaul or poison snakes biting him in his belly. This is Job’s present state, as seen by Zophar, the self-righteous Naamathite, feigned friend of Job from afar, Pro 20:17; Pro 20:28; Jer 2:21; Rev 10:9-10.
Verse 15 adds that Job had swallowed down, gorged himself, on his ill-gotten wealth, and now must disgorge, regurgitate, or vomit it up. For God, he would cast it out of his belly; How dangerous an half truth can be, in the hands of the conceited, the presumptuous! Pro 23:8; Mat 27:3-4.
Verses 16,17 further predict that Job will suck the venom of asps from his belly, or strangle trying to do so, for the viper’s “tongue shall slay him.” Verse 17 explains that Job should never again see the rivers, floods, or flowing of brooks of honey and butter again, as in the past. This refers to the pouring of honey and cream and milk of plenty, from jars of plenty, where it was more plentiful and fluid in the east, Job 29:6; Exo 3:17. See also Num 14:23; Numbers 2 Kg 7:2; Jer 17:6.
Verse 18 goes on to declare that even what Job had labored for he would restore (give up) and not swallow it down or digest it for strength. He should make restitution through his surviving family relatives and never have occasion to rejoice in what he once accumulated, Zophar asserted, as if he was only reaping what he had sown, Gal 6:7-8; He seemed totally unaware that Job’s loss might be for testing, for the glory of God, as Joseph’s was, Gen 50:20-21; Jas 4:12-16.
Verses 19, 20 charge that because of Job’s oppression and neglect of the poor, his crushing the poor, and his violently taking houses that he did not build, he would never have quietness in his belly, peace in his soul, or have anything that he desired to save from destruction and loss, Ecc 5:13; See also 2Ch 16:10; Isa 5:8; Mic 2:2. All he had was gone forever.
Verses 21, 22 add that none of his food accumulated or eaten will be left, so that no man should look for his goods. All had been or would be destroyed. He was to die with his belly empty, with gnawing hunger, justly, according to Zophar’s prophecy. In the fullness of his abundance he had been brought to this straight, hard way, or mighty fall. And every hand of the wicked was to come upon his remaining relatives to take revenge for what Job had done to them, Psa 7:10-13. This was Zophar’s false prophecy.
Verse 23 further prophesies that when Job attempts to eat, to satisfy his hunger, God will cast the fury of his anger upon him, like a cloudburst of rain, while he is eating, to interrupt his satisfaction of his hunger, Num 11:33; Psa 78:30-31.
Verses 24, 25 add that Job will live to flee from the iron weapon or brass weapon of the enemy, it will strike him through. It is drawn, Isa 24:18; Jer 48:43; Amo 5:19. God draws the sword against him, and it is thrust through the very vitals and gaul of Job’s body, striking the added terror of death, Job 18:11; Psa 73:19; Psa 88:16.
Verse 26 declares that all dark deeds of man are kept in store in God’s secret places, records, until the judgment hour, when a fire not yet blown or stirred up will consume him, so that it would not go well with him who was still afflicted in his decaying tabernacle, Psa 21:9; Jud 1:13; Mat 3:12.
Verse 27 adds that the heavens will disclose, pull the cover from over his iniquity, wicked deeds, and the earth would rise up as witness and judge against him, Ecc 12:13-14; Isa 26:21.
Verse 28 concludes Zophar’s damning condemnation against Job. He declares that the increase of his house (family unit) would depart and his goods, few left to his relatives would flow away in the hour of his final just judgment for his sins. Then dogmatically he asserted that “this” is or exists as the portion of a wicked man, under the hand of God’s wrath, as Job was. This he concluded was the kind of heritage the living God had appointed as pay for his deeds of wicked hypocrisy, Job 18:21; Job 27:13; Job 31:2-3; Psa 11:5-6; Mat 24:51.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
ZOPHARS READY ANSWER
Job 20:1-29.
ONCE more, it is to laugh. Two men worsted in their rounds, calmly lie down and with bruised spirits and heavy breath rest, while the third takes his turn.
Zophar defends the necessity of plain speech.
Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said,
Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste.
I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my understanding causeth me to answer (Job 20:1-3).
Whenever a debater wants to be ugly he takes recourse in the necessity of what he calls plain speech. Plain speech is often nothing other than nasty words.
He declares the principle of judgment for sin.
Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth,
That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?
Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds;
Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
He shall flee away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
The eye also which saw him shall see him no more: neither shall his place any more behold him.
His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.
His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.
Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue;
Though he spare it, and forsake it not, but keep it still within his mouth;
Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him.
He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.
He shall suck the poison of asps: the vipers tongue shall slay him.
He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.
That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not Swallow it down: according to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein.
Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not (Job 20:4-19).
How much easier it is to philosophize about sin than to face it, refuse it, conquer against it!
He accepts afflictions as a proof of hypocrisy.
Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly, he shall not save of that which he desired.
There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man look for his goods.
In the fullness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits: every hand of the wicked shall come upon him.
When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.
He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.
It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him.
All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him.
The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.
This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God (Job 20:20-29).
This is the speech of a healthy man. Never in human history was it made by an afflicted man. It was a speech made by a man free from bodily infirmity. Never in human history was it made by a man full of bodily infirmity. How difficult it is to put ourselves in the other fellows place, and how hard it is to be just in our judgment of our fellows infirmities.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
ZOPHARS SECOND SPEECH
Produces nothing new; much more outspoken than before. Enlarges on the miseries overtaking the wicked, insinuating that Job was such. His argument,like in condition, like in character.
I. The introduction to the speech
His reason for speaking again, viz., Jobs charges of cruelty and unkindness, and his denunciation of Divine wrath against them on account of it (Job. 20:2). Therefore (because of thy charges and denunciations), do my thoughts (cogitations as to what I ought to do) cause me to answer, and for this I make haste (margin, my haste [or earnestness] is in me). I have heard the check of my reproach (reproof that is a reproach to me), and the spirit of my understanding (my spirit which has intelligence regarding the subject in question) causeth me to answer. Observe
1. The part of a wise man not to speak without sufficient reason. Zophar had a reason for speaking, but not a correct one. Jobs charges and denunciations were true and just.
2. Pride ill brooks reproof. Men seldom willing to take the reproach which they give to others. Judge not, that ye be not judged.
3. Right to think well before uttering ones sentiments on more serious subjects. Better that our thoughts cause us to answer than our feelings.
4. Insensibility no part of piety. Zophar felt as well as thought. Spoke from ardour as well as reflection. Good to be zealously affected in a good thing. What is not spoken earnestly may as well remain unspoken.
5. Earnestness to be grounded on just considerations. Thought to lead, feeling to follow. While I was musing the fire burned. Zophars feeling called haste. Often too much haste both in our feeling and our words. With less haste in Zophars spirit, there had been more humanity in his speech. He that hasteth with his feet sinneth. Not less he that hasteth with his tongue. Be not rash with thy mouth. Slow to speak, swift to hear. What is spoken in haste, frequently not according to truth. Hasty words make matter for repentance. Hastily spoken not always hastily forgotten. Hasty words often make deep wounds. The hasty to speak the slowest to learn (Pro. 29:20).
6. A spirit of intelligence to be prized and cultivated. Natural understanding the gift of God, but may either be fed or famished. The best way to a good understanding is a good life. An honest man has half as much more brains as he needs. A good understanding have all they that keep His commandments. Christ made wisdom to those who are in Him, as well as righteousness and sanctification (1Co. 1:30). Wisdom given to believing prayer (Jas. 1:5-6). To have a good understanding one needs to keep both eyes and ears open. A spirit of intelligence necessary to a good answer. A light needful for entering a dark chamber. Safe not to speak on a subject till you are conscious of understanding it.
II. The speech itself
The gist of itJob must be a wicked man. The reasoningWicked men are miserable, either now or afterwards; Job is very miserable; therefore Job is a wicked man. The question: Are only wicked men miserable in this life? Job maintains that the wicked are not always nor alone miserable; that time and chance come alike to all. Zophars second speech another example of lofty Oriental poetry. Contains solemn and weighty truths, quoted and verified to this day. His opening statement such (Job. 20:5). The triumphing (or song) of the wicked is short (Heb., from near; like water taken from the surface instead of a deep well, therefore ending quickly and abruptly); the joy of the hypocrite (or profane) is but for a moment. The allusion to Jobs case too obvious. The statement true, but not always in the sense of Zophar. The joy of the wicked short-lived. May last through life, but not beyond it. The pleasure of sin but for a season. The joy of the ungodly short, as
(1) It has no solid foundationbuilt only on earthly things that perish with the using;
(2) Is based upon a falsehood, viz., that sin and the creature are able to give happiness;
(3) Can only exist in the present life. Creature-enjoyment no longer-lived than the creature itself. Sin in its own nature opposed to lasting enjoyment. Divine justice engaged to terminate it in this life. Sin a tree with branches enough, but no root; with plenty of blossom, but no fruit. Observe
1. The longest life but for a moment.
(1) In comparison with eternity;
(2) In the view of the individual himself towards its close. Sad, for the pleasure of a moment to throw away the joys of an endless life.
2. The joy of the hypocrite or profane but for a moment.
(1) As confined to this life;
(2) In comparison with the joy of the righteous, which is lasting. The joy of a false religion, or of a mere external profession and shallow experience of the true, a lamp that goes out from want of oil.Zophar refers to all past history for confirmation (Job. 20:4). Knowest thou not this of old, &c. The history of the past most useful when serving as a guide to the present. History full of examples of the
Short-lived prosperity of sin
The memory of the Flood and its terrible lessons still fresh in the days of Zophar. The truth solemn and salutary, but Zophars application of it cruel and unjust. His statements, too, require a wider field of vision than the present world.
1. The prosperous ungodly sooner or later overthrown with contempt and infamy (Job. 20:6). Though his excellency (loftiness or exaltation) mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds (though he attain the highest pitch of earthly prosperity and grandeur), yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung (cast away with contempt and abhorrence; or, according to some, in the midst of his splendour); they that have seen him (beholding with admiration his prosperity) shall say, Where is he? Obvious allusion to jobs former dignity and prosperity. Prosperous wickedness is
(1) One of the mysteries of Providence;
(2) One of the trials of good men;
(3) One of the proofs of a future judgment. The perplexity of Asaph till he went into the sanctuary of God, and understood the end (Psa. 78:17). No man to be called happy till the end of his life, a maxim of the ancient heathen. Revelation adds, Nor till after the end of it. Christ lifts the curtain and shows what is beyond. Humbling contrast with former haughtiness and magnificence implied in Zophars simile (so Psa. 83:10). Contempt and infamy attach to wickedness, however prosperous. A day coming when Gods despisers shall be an abhorring to all flesh (Isa. 66:24).
2. The prosperous ungodly vanish from sight and memory (Job. 20:8). He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found; yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. The eye also which saw him (looked on him with admiration) shall see him no more, &c. The life of the ungodly especially a dream, as
(1) Without solidity and reality;
(2) As quickly terminating;
(3) As soon forgotten. No trace left that men care to cherish. No pleasing and profitable footprints on the sands of time. Good men only the truly great who remind us we can make our lives sublime. The memory of the wicked shall rot. Associated with nothing excellent, noble, or benevolent. The presence of bad great men on earth a nightmare, which men would fain chase away and then forget. Seen especially in the case of tyrants, ambitious and unprincipled rulers, men climbing to power by forbidden ways and employing it for evil ends.
3. Their children affected by their sin (Job. 20:10). His children shall seek to please the poor (to propitiate the poor, whom their father oppressed or defrauded; or, shall be so reduced as to court the favour even of the poor; margin, the poor shall oppress his children; Cocerdalehis children shall go a begging); and his hand (or, their hands) shall restore their goods (the goods of which their father had plundered them). Observe
(1) An inheritance of trouble bequeathed by the ungodly to their offspring. In the Providence of God, the effects of a mans oppression made to extend to his children. The child often reaps what the father sows, good or bad.
(2) Ill-gotten wealth, sooner or later, proves ill-gotten woe. Restitution of unjust gains follows either in a mans own life-time or his childrens. Made voluntarily, the curse is averted both from himself and them. Zaccheus the publican (Luk. 19:1, &c). The reference here to the rich mans children cruel towards Job, still mourning the loss of his seven sons and three daughters.
4. Effects of their sin entailed on their own person (Job. 20:11). His bones are full of the sins of his youth (or of his secret sins, or of youthful vigour), which shall lie down with him in the dust. Apparent allusion to Jobs diseased body. Observe
(1) Bodily disease often the result of by-gone excesses. Age often made to inherit the sins of youth (ch. Job. 13:26). Hence Davids prayer (Psa. 25:7). Seeds of disease sown in sinful indulgences. The drunkard carries the effects of his cups to the grave. Secret sins often followed by open sufferings. A cruel insinuation on the part of Zophar that this was Jobs case.
(2) The sinner often smitten with disease and death in the midst of prosperity and apparent strength. Herod at Cesarea (Act. 12:21-23).
(3) Sad when a mans sins lie down with him in the dust. Certain, if not prevented by repentance, faith, and forgiveness. To lie down with him in the dust is to continue his companions for ever (Rev. 22:11). Separation from our sins either now or never.
5. Terrible misery after temporary enjoyment (Job. 20:12-14). Though wickedness (especially in the acquisition and enjoyment of ill-gotten wealth), be sweet in his mouth; though he hide it under his tongue (either for secrecy or continued enjoyment); though he spare it and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth: yet his meat in his bowels is turned; it is the gall of asps (the most deadly poison) within him. Sin sweet to the unrenewed heart. Stolen waters sweet. Such sweetness short-lived. Honey in the mouth becomes gall in the bowels. Sin in itself a deadly poison. Death itself, and death its wages. Davids sweet sin with Bathsheba broke his bones. The blood of Urijah brought blood into his house. The effect of sinful enjoyment is to mourn at the last (Pro. 5:11-14). Poison no less deadly became sweet to the taste. The sweetest things often the sourest afterwards.
6. Forced surrender of acquired wealth (Job. 20:15). He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again; God shall cast them out of his belly. Apparently Jobs case. Riches eagerly pursued, abundantly obtained, and fondly enjoyed, to be sooner or later unwillingly surrendered. The worldling and his wealth part company, if not before, yet on a dying bed. The glutton compelled to vomit up his dainty morsels. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. The sumptuous table then gladly exchanged for a drop of water. The worldling unable to keep his wealth a moment beyond Gods pleasure. A thousand means at His disposal of making him quit his grasp on this side of death. The failure of a bank, the fall of a mercantile house, the explosion of some promising speculation, sufficient for the purpose. But even now worth this, and now worth nothing!
7. Death in some distressing form and circumstances (Job. 20:16). He shall suck the poison of asps (the most deadly one); the vipers tongue (put out when about to bite), shall slay him. All animate and inanimate nature only instruments for the execution of Gods purposes, whether of judgment or of mercy. The effect of the intoxicating cup, that at last it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder (Pro. 23:32). To suck the pleasures of sin now is to suck the poison of asps hereafter. The Bible draws aside the veil and reveals mans tempter become his tormenter (Luk. 16:19-26).
8. Bitter disappointment and exclusion from future happiness (Job. 20:17). He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. A blessedness even in this life, of which, the worldling deprives himself. Still more in the life to come. The river of life, the wine of the kingdom, the fruits of paradise, the joys at Gods right hand, the pleasures for evermore, all forfeited for the momentary pleasures of sin. To the cry at the closed gates: Lord, Lord, open unto us, the only response: Depart from me, I never know you.
9. No real enjoyment of his riches even here (Job. 20:18). That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down (or enjoy it); according to his sub stance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein. Riches gathered often become riches scattered. To obtain wealth one thing, to enjoy it another. Great gains not always great gain. Man gets, God gives. Ill-gotten, ill-gone, [Latin Proverb]. Wealth often the parent of woe. A canker in a sinners gold (Jas. 5:3). Wages earned without God only put into a bag with holes. The world a lie, especially to those who trust in it. Money outside the heart a blessing, inside of it a curse.
10. A troubled conscience (Job. 20:19-20). Because he hath oppressed and hath for saken the poor; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not (obtaining it by fraud instead of honest industry); surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly (his mind or conscience), he shall not save of that which he desired (or, shall not escape with his coveted but illgotten wealth). Another cruel and unjust allusion to Job. The charge of oppression afterwards directly made by Eliphaz (ch. Job. 22:5-9). Taken generally, the statement true. Ill-gained wealth, like the hoarded manna, breeds worms; the worm of an accusing conscience. The rust of dishonest gain eats into the flesh like fire (Jas. 5:3). A house built by oppression gives a voice to its stones and timber (Hab. 2:9-11). A quiet conscience better than a well-filled coffer. Naboths coveted vineyard a curse both to Ahab and his wife (1Ki. 21:1-19).
11. Loss of property and of children (Job. 20:21). There shall none of his meat be left (margin, there shall none be left for his meat); therefore shall no man look for his goods. A cutting sentence for impoverished and bereaved Job. Jobs full house now an empty one. His goods gone, and none to inherit the miserable remnant. The richest man in Uz now penniless. The man with ten adult children now without even one. Able lately to leave an ample inheritance to his children, now without either estate or sons to inherit it. One of the worlds vanities the desire to enrich ones heirs. God and man often robbed while living to leave larger sums when dead. A worldly mans great affliction to lose the heir of his hoarded wealth. The rich worldling often compelled to leave his riches to those for whom he cares not, and who care not for him.
12. Perplexity and trouble in the midst of his riches (Job. 20:22). In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits: every hand of the wicked (or of the mischievous; every kind of mischief; or every blow that comes upon the wretched) shall come upon him. A sad and cutting remembrancer to Job of his various calamities and the quarter from which some of them had come. God, in His providence, visits the prosperous wicked with sudden and unexpected manifestations of His anger (Job. 20:23) When he is about to fill his belly (or, there shall be wherewith to fill his belly) God shall cast the fury of His wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him (as literally on Sodom and Gomorrha; also implying the vehemence and abundance of the judgments) while be is eating (in the midst of his enjoyment; or, as his food). A bitter sarcasm. The worldling sits down to his sumptuous table, but the wrath of God shall be his dish. Vengeance shall be his viand. He shall be fed with fury for his food. Case of the rich fool (Luk. 12:16-20). Experienced by Israel in the wilderness (Num. 11:33; Psa. 78:30-31. Appeared to have been realised in Job. Overtaken by apparent judgments in the midst of his prosperity. Fire rained on his cattle as on the cities of the Plain (ch. Job. 1:16; Gen. 19:24). Fiery rain instead of refreshing showers an awful sign of judgment (Psa. 50:3).
13. Inability to effect escape (Job. 20:24). He shall flee from the iron weapon (the weapon employed in close combat,visible judgments),and the bow (discharging its arrows from a distance,invisible judgments) of steel (Heb. of brass; therefore with all the more force) shall strike him through. Seeking to escape from one evil he falls into another. Fleeing from the pit he falls into the snare. God at no loss for means to punish the ungodly. Vain attempt to escape when God purposes to destroy. The only place of refuge for a sinner the wounds of Jesus opened to satisfy justice for his sins. Submission to God and faith in His Son the only but certain safety for the guilty.
14. Rapid and effectual execution of Gods purposes of vengeance (Job. 20:25). It is drawn (viz., the arrow or the sword with which to punish the ungodly), and cometh out of the body (having passed through it); yea, the glittering sword (of Divine vengeance, Deu. 32:41; Eze. 21:9-10) cometh out of his gall (or gall-bladder, having thus inflicted a deadly wound): terrors are upon him (the terror of death which now stares him in the face, and the terrors of judgment immediately to follow). The language rapid, elliptical, and in the past and present tense, to indicate the suddenness and certainty of the blow. A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. How shall we escape if we neglect the great salvation? (Job. 20:16.All darkness (all kinds of calamity, or accumulated misery) shall be hid in his secret places, (hid amongst his choicest treasures, or secretly laid up for him in places where he expected safety). Observe
(1) Gods judgments find the sinner in his most secret and secure retreat. When they shall say, peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.
(2) Among a sinners most valuable possessions lies a hidden curse. A fire not blown (requiring no blowing, or not kindled by man, viz., the fire of God or lightning, as ch. Job. 1:16) shall consume him. Terrible word for poor Job, who had seen his sheep and the shepherds consumed in this very way. A similar judgment on the household of Korah, &c. (Num. 16:35). It shall go ill with him that is left (or, it shall consume what is left) in his tabernacle. Words cruelly telling in the case of Job. The fire of God had left but one shepherd to tell the tale of the disaster. Stroke after stroke had fallen on his property and household, till all were consumed but his wife and three servants. Job, if any, seemed marked out by Divine judgments as a secret and guilty transgressor. Terrible trial for faith. Who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry? (Psa. 76:7).
15. Secret sins discovered (Job. 20:27). The heavens shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him. Apparently verified in Jobs case. The lightning from heaven, and the Chaldean and Sabean marauders, with the whirlwind of the desert, from the earth, seemed to proclaim him a wicked man, whom vengeance was at length overtaking (Act. 28:4). Observe
(1) Animate and inanimate creation made at Gods pleasure to conspire against his enemies.
(2) Iniquity, however secretly committed, sooner or later revealed. No darkness or shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide either themselves or their sins. Secret iniquity not only open to Gods view, but one day to be so to that of the universe. Hypocrisy only now the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone. No cloak of religion able to hide sin from God, or by-and-by, from our neighbour either. Terrible exposure awaiting secret evil-doers.
(3) Our sins either to be found out now by ourselves and brought to the throne of grace to be pardoned, or to be found out hereafter by God, and brought to the throne of judgment to be punished.
16. Destruction of all belongings in a day of wrath (Job. 20:28). The increase (progeny, or natural products) of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away (be swept away as by a torrent, suddenly and irrecoverably) in the day of his wrath. Sad verification of this apparently afforded in the case of Job. The whole progeny of his house, with all his goods, swept away as by an inundation. A day of wrath now surely overtaking this prince of Uz. Difficult for him and his friends to believe otherwise. To the latter the thing was clear. To Job it seemed so; but if actual wrath, it was undeserved. Jobs error in sometimes inclining to the latter alternative. His apparent day of wrath was, in reality, a day of love. Observe
(1) The province of faith to believe against all appearances. Behind a frowning providence, &c.
(2) Easy with God to sweep away all the increase of a mans house.
(3) A day of wrath coming, in which all earthly possessions will flow away. The earth and the works therein shall be burned up (2Pe. 3:10).
III. The summing-up (Job. 20:29).
This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God (Heb., the heritage of the decree of the Mighty One; decreed by Him who is Almighty, therefore irresistible). Similar language in Psa. 11:6. The conclusion apparently unavoidable in relation to Job. The portion of a wicked man manifestly meted out to him. If Job is not such a man, all our notions of the Divine government in this world are upsetthe rock is removed out of his place. Strong faith and a sound conscience required by Job to believe that God would yet clear his character. The statement of Zophar both true and untrue. Viewed in relation to this life, not always true. Viewed in relation to the next, far short of the fact. A more terrible portion awaits the impenitent in another world. The harrowing things mentioned by Zophar only a foreshadowing and prelude to the sinners future doom. Wrath rarely exhibited in this world, because reserved for the next. Days of wrath here sent as specimens and warnings of that which is to come.
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When heaven and earth shall pass away.
What power shall be the sinners stay?
How shall ye meet that dreadful day?
Jesus, be Thou my spirits stay,
Though heaven and earth shall pass away.
Observe
(1) A sinners portion not what he wishes, but what God appoints.
(2) His portion a heritage(i.) As contrasted with his earthly possessions and enjoyments; (ii.) As certain to find him as its heir;
(3) Solemn contrast between this portion and that of the believer in Jesus (Psa. 16:5; 1Pe. 1:3).
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
E.
POWERLESSNESS OF PROSPERITYNO ULTIMATE SECURITYZOPHARS WARNING (Job. 20:1-29)
TEXT 20:129
Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said,
2 Therefore do my thoughts give answer to me,
Even by reason of my haste that is in me.
3 I have heard the reproof which putteth me to shame;
And the spirit of my understanding answereth me.
4 Knowest thou not this of old time,
Since man was placed upon earth,
5 That the triumphing of the wicked is short,
And the joy of the godless but for a moment?
6 Though his height mount up to the heavens,
And his head reach unto the clouds;
7 Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung:
They that have seen him shall say, Where is he?
8 He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found:
Yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
9 The eye which saw him shall see him no more;
Neither shall his place any more behold him.
10 His children shall seek the favor of the poor,
And his hands shall give back his wealth.
11 His bones are full of his youth,
But it shall lie down with him in the dust.
12 Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth,
Though he hide it under his tongue,
13 Though he spare it, and will not let it go,
But keep it still within his mouth;
14 Yet his food in his bowels is turned,
It is the gall of asps within him.
15 He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again;
God will cast them out of his belly.
16 He shall suck the poison of asps:
The vipers tongue shall slay him.
17 He shall not look upon the riven,
The flowing streams of honey and batter.
18 That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down;
According to the substance that he hath gotten, he shall not rejoice.
19 For he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor;
He hath violently taken away a house, and he shall not build it up.
20 Because he knew no quietness within him,
He shall not save aught of that wherein he delighteth.
21 There was nothing left that he devoured not;
Therefore his prosperity shall not endure.
22 In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits:
The hand of every one that is in misery shall come upon him.
23 When he is about to fill his belly,
God will cast the fierceness of his wrath upon him,
And will ram it upon him while he is eating.
24 He shall flee from the iron weapon,
And the bow of brass shall strike him through.
25 He draweth it forth, and it cometh out of his body;
Yea, the glittering point cometh out of his gall:
Terrors are upon him.
26 All darkness is laid up for his treasures:
A fire not blown by man shall devour him;
It shall consume that which is left in his tent.
27 The heavens shall reveal his iniquity.
And the earth shall rise up against him.
28 The increase of his house shall depart;
His goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.
29 This is the portion of a wicked man from God,
And the heritage appointed unto him by God.
COMMENT 20:129
Job. 20:1Zophar explodes with anxiety at Jobs charges and closely parallels Bildads speech in chapter 18. Both deal with the destruction of the godless. More heat than light flows from Zophars speech. In his passionate speech, he once more emphasizes the insecurity of the prosperity of the unrighteous. Every syllable of his remorseless invective is irrelevant, even if true. Bildads tirade in chapter 18 and Zophars irrelevant speech in chapter 20 together frame Jobs marvelous credo in chapter 19. His is a living faith; theirs is a rigid retribution-oriented religion. Two characteristics of Zophars speech are: (1) greater hostility than before, and (2) use of crude imagery, especially in Job. 20:7; Job. 20:15.[223]
[223] See B. H. Kelly, Truth in Contradiction: A Study of Job 20, 21, Interpretation, 1961, pp. 147156.
Job. 20:2-3Zophar has almost choked on his silence; now in exasperation he must speak. The verse begins with takenthereforewhich suggests something is missing. For the first time one of Jobs friends admits to being impressed by his speech. I hear censure which insults me. (See Isa. 53:5 for same wordcensureas chastisement.) Zophars thoughts cause him to intervene once more. Perhaps the line means that he is boiling over inside and cannot control his hostility. (Brown, Driver, Briggs gives thy inner excitement.) He claims to speak out of (Heb. preposition minsource from which) knowledge which Job does not. Job has shamed him; he must respond. There is a possibility that the phrase shameful rebuke refers to homosexual abusesJob. 31:31. Dhorme very nicely handles the grammatical problems in Job. 20:3 b by translating the verb in a causative sensea wind (or impulse) arising from my understanding prompts me to reply, Job, p. 290.
Job. 20:4Zophar is not asking himself if he knows but Do you not know?[224] If the wicked prosper, it is only for a brief time. He continues to maintain the invariableness between ungodliness and disaster. The success of the wicked in contrast to the suffering of the righteous plagues the writers of our biblical wisdom literature. Zophar once more expounds his traditional, standard answerPs. 37:73. The answer has always been the sameDeu. 4:32.
[224] On this point see R. Gordis, Harvard Theological Review, 1940, p. 244.
Job. 20:5The solution to the problem presented by the prosperity of the wicked is that it is only for a short timePsalms 73. Empirically this is not a happy solution, either for individuals or groups, nations, haves and have nots. It is the kind of talk that revolutions are made of. Ultimately the only consolation of the righteous is in resurrection. The rejection of resurrection possibilities is the basis of twentieth century efforts at the humanization of man, through socio-political means. Central to this naturalistic humanism is a denial of a vertical dimension to sin, which leaves only a horizontal vision of salvation, which becomes merely better and more factors which generate a positive response to daily existence.[225] Christ, our risen Lord, is our only and ultimate consolation. Joy and grace co-mingle in His empty tomb and ascension.
[225] One of the Christian faiths deadliest foes is contemporary Neo-Marxism which comes in well-tailored sheeps clothing, first to Italy, then to France, on to England, then perhaps the USA with our socialistic democracy as its noblest habitat. When Capitalism lost God as a transcendent moral basis of stewardship, only materialistic hedonism remains. See Bell, Contradictions of Capitalism, 1975.
Job. 20:6His loftiness, i.e., his eminence, is only momentary. But great will be the fallMat. 9:24 ff. As Strahan has well declared, It is not Zophars sermon against pride that makes him a false prophet, but his application of it to Job.[226]
[226] R. H. Strahan, The Book of Job Interpreted, 1913, see esp. chapters 1821.
Job. 20:7Zophar sinks to a new low in his use of the brutally inelegant metaphor2Ki. 9:37. His vigorous coarseness is bested only by his boorish brutality.
Job. 20:8Job is contrasted to a dream which is gone upon awakening. He will be as unavailable as a night vision; continued chase will only cause future crisisPsa. 73:20 and Isa. 29:8.
Job. 20:9The verb translated sawsazapJob. 28:7means to catch sight of and emphasizes the brevity of the appearance. The image has appeared before in Job. 7:8; Job. 7:10; Job. 8:18; Psa. 1:4; Psa. 103:16.
Job. 20:10The poverty of the wicked will force their children to beg from the poor, so destitute is their condition. Perhaps Zophar is suggesting that the sons of the wicked will be forced to return to those whom he has made impoverished through his illicit gain. It is also possible that hands in the second line stands for offspring.[227]
[227] For this possibility, see R. Gordis, JBL, 1943, p. 343.
Job. 20:11Here the imagery suggests that the wicked will die prematurely, i.e., full of youthPsa. 55:23.
Job. 20:12The riches of the ungodly are like sweet food in the mouth which turns to poison in the stomach. Evil is compared with something tasty. The sweetness of sin turns into the gall of retribution, and riches wrongfully acquired must be vomited up again (Rowley, Job, p. 178)Heb. 11:15. Sin is so sweet that it is hidden under the tongue to retain maximum pleasure for as long as possible.
Job. 20:13The verb translated spare means have compassion on, implying that Job loves sin so much that he has compassion on it and will not let it go. His secret sins are concealed in his mouth.
Job. 20:14The sweet-tasting food has become poison. The enjoyment of sin metamorphizes into tragic bitterness and destroys the imbiberPro. 20:17. Pliny expresses the ancient belief that it is the gall which constitutes the poison of asps.
Job. 20:15The figure is in keeping with Zophars coarse rhetorical devices. The evil greedy man must vomit up all his ill-gotten wealth. Here God does not administer an emetic to cause the unrighteous to disgorge the poison; the evil person is so sick that he self-imposes the vomiting.
Job. 20:16The poisonous greed proved the undoing of the ungodly. Greed generates oppression; oppression generates alienation. The central problem of western economic man, from Keynes to our gross national product, is that greed is the dynamic which enables unwise and unreasonable men to make decisions as though infinite economic growth is possible. Perhaps we note here the assumption that the darting tongue of the viper is the actual source of poison.
Job. 20:17The time of enjoyment for the wicked is passed. The joy of leisure is an unavailable goal for the ungodly. The nature of work and leisure are once more fundamental issues in our culture, and for the same reason as is suggested in our text. The flowing rivers will not be available to evil men.[228] Refreshments for the leisure time of the greedy, which are honey and curdsJdg. 5:25 and Isa. 7:14will also avoid them.
[228] R. de Vaux, Revue Biblique, 1937, p. 533.
Job. 20:18The wicked cannot swallow the profit of labor (one Hebrew word extended in A. V., that which he labored for). The metaphor depicts one who is gagging, i.e., one who cannot swallow what is in his mouth. The profits of his trading is choking him, therefore, not rejoicing.
Job. 20:19The wicked have callously abandoned the poor to their fate, after oppressively mistreating them.[229] The second line declares that the wicked man does not enjoy the fruit of his violence, even though he will not abandon it. He is not satisfied even after violently oppressing the powerless poor. Dahood renders the verse, For he crushed the huts of the poor, He has sacked a house which he did not build.
[229] For problems in this verse, see M. Dahood, JBL, 1959, pp. 306ff; and J. Reider, Hebrew Union College Annual 195253, pp. 1-3ff.
Job. 20:20The greed of the wicked is insatiable. This verse repeats the same thoughts as found in Job. 20:19. Those with insatiable appetites defeat themselves. How appropriate these thoughts are for 20th century America, in light of the conditions in the Third and Fourth Worlds.[230]
[230] See my The Word of God far a Broken World (LCC Press, 1977), for a look at missions and the Third and Fourth Worlds; and N. M. Sarna, JBL, 1959, pp. 315ff.
Job. 20:21The verse is not emphasizing gluttony for food, but an oppressive aggression which consumes the pitiful powerless poor. It repeats the same thoughts as Job. 20:19-20, but makes emphasis with different metaphors.
Job. 20:22The imagery suggests that avarice consumes the wicked. Anguish in the midst of luxury: how can this be? The contradictions continueall the blows of misfortune pour upon him, Dhorme. This is an excellent translation of the Hebrew which literally says every hand or force of one in misery will fall upon him.
Job. 20:23What seems to be self-destructive results of the behavior of the wicked is really Gods judgment upon their lives. God, too, sends abundance, abundance of His wrath. While the ungodly person is filling his belly, He (Godnot in text but must be the subject) will send His burning anger upon him (Hebrew is lechumbowelsinner feelings, emotions).[231]
[231] M. Dahood, Biblica, 1957, pp. 314ff, for the translation and he shall rain on him in his flesh.
Job. 20:24The metaphor changes from fiery rain from heaven to that of heavy iron weapons.[232] While trying to elude one death-dealing weapon, another will fall on him. There is no hiding placeAmo. 5:19 and Isa. 24:18.
[232] G. R. Driver, Vestus Testamentum, 1960, p. 82.
Job. 20:25The image is a description of the wicked wounded by an arrow, seeking to withdraw it from his body. Finally, the glittering point (lit. lightning-flashing point of the arrow) is pulled out of the gallJob. 20:14Deu. 32:41; Nah. 3:3; Hab. 3:11.
Job. 20:26Same image as expressed in Job. 15:22. The consuming fire is not of human origin, and it will destroy everything.
Job. 20:27Job has already asked for a heavenly witness, and that the earth not silence the witness of his bloodJob. 16:18 ff. Here heaven and earth will combine their witness against him.
Job. 20:28The word translated depart (yigel) means to go into exile. Others will carry away his prosperity into their tents. Nothing remains his own. The flood (torrents for niggerot2Sa. 14:14), like the fire in Job. 20:26, has its origin in the purposes of God. The expression of divine judgment will result in the total destruction of the wicked.
Job. 20:29This is the conclusion of Zophars speech and repeats what he has already assertedJob. 5:27; Job. 18:21the end of the wicked is destruction.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XX.
(1) Then answered Zophar.Zophar retorts with yet greater vehemence than before, and assumes a more ornate and elaborate style, still reiterating the former burden of the speedy doom of the wicked man.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
ZOPHAR’S SECOND REPLY.
1. The strange composure of Job, his consciousness of innocency, and his faith in God, instead of winning the sympathy, have served only to cut to the quick the heart of his antagonist. None are more disposed to deal in denunciation than they who have been wounded in vanity by being worsted in argument. Exasperated by Job’s allusion, in his closing exhortation, to the sword and the judgment, Zophar wields the terrors of the law, and conceives that he is doing God service by such maintenance of His truth. In the vivid and masterly portraiture of the wicked rich man Zophar evidently has his eye on Job, and in describing the doom of wealth gotten by fraud and rapine, he more than insinuates, that this is the secret of Job’s trouble. Complete destruction has come upon him because there was no limit to his greed. Job’s fervent appeal to a future life, with all its resources of hope and deliverance, is offset by the fate of the godless wretch who, hurled from the summit of worldly prosperity, is consumed by a fire unkindled by human breath. The moral of Zophar’s address is, that Job, instead of talking piously, would much better give himself to repentance.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job’s Dialogue with Three Friends – Job 3:1 to Job 31:40, which makes up the major portion of this book, consists of a dialogue between Job and his three friends. In this dialogue, Job’s friends engage in three rounds of accusations against Job, with him offering three defenses of his righteousness. Thus, Job and his friends are able to confirm each of their views with three speeches, since the Scriptures tell us that a matter is confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses (2Co 13:1). The underlying theme of this lengthy dialogue is man’s attempt to explain how a person is justified before God. Job will express his intense grief (Job 3:1-26), in which his three friends will answer by finding fault with Job. He will eventually respond to this condemnation in a declaration of faith that God Himself will provide a redeemer, who shall stand on earth in the latter days (Job 19:25-27). This is generally understood as a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ to redeem mankind from their sins.
Job’s declaration of his redeemer in Job 19:23-29, which would be recorded for ever, certainly moved the heart of God. This is perhaps the most popular passage in the book of Job, and reflects the depth of Job’s suffering and plea to God for redemption. God certainly answered his prayer by recording Job’s story in the eternal Word of God and by allowing Job to meet His Redeemer in Heaven. I can imagine God being moved by this prayer of Job and moving upon earth to provide someone to record Job’s testimony, and moving in the life of a man, such as Abraham, to prepare for the Coming of Christ. Perhaps it is this prayer that moved God to call Abraham out of the East and into the Promised Land.
The order in which these three friends deliver their speeches probably reflects their age of seniority, or their position in society.
Scene 1 First Round of Speeches Job 3:1 to Job 14:22
Scene 2 Second Round of Speeches Job 15:1 to Job 21:34
Scene 3 Third Round of Speeches Job 22:1 to Job 31:40
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Zophar States Why he must Speak
v. 1. Then answered Zophar, the Naamathite, v. 2. Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, v. 3. I have heard the check of my reproach, v. 4. Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, v. 5. that the triumphing of the wicked is short,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Job 20:1-29
Zophar’s second speech is even more harsh than his first (Job 11:1-20.). He adds coarseness and rudeness to his former vehement hostility (Job 20:7, Job 20:15). His whole discourse is a covert denunciation of Job as a wicked man and a hypocrite (verses 5, 12, 19, 29), deservedly punished by God for a life of crime. He ends by prophesying Job’s violent death, the destruction of his house, and the rising up of heaven and earth in witness against him (verses 24-28).
Job 20:1, Job 20:2
Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer. Zophar “has heard the check of his reproach” (Job 20:3), i.e. the reproach contained in the last words of Job in the preceding chapter. Therefore his thoughts rise up within him, and com-psi him to make a reply. He cannot allow Job to shift the onus of guilt and the menace of punishment on his friends, when it is he, Job, that is the guilty person, over whom the judgments of God impend. And for this I make haste; rather, and because of my haste that is within me (see the Revised Version); i.e. “because I am of a hasty and impetuous temperament.”
Job 20:3
I have heard the check of my reproach; or, the reproof which putteth me to shame (Revised Version). Some suppose an allusion to Job 19:2, Job 19:3; but it is better to regard Zophar as enraged by Job 19:28, Job 19:29 of Job 19:1-29. And the spirit of my understanding causeth me to answer. This claim is not quite consistent with the acknowledgment of hastiness in Job 19:2. But it is no unusual thing for an impetuous and hasty man to declare that he speaks from the dictates of pure dispassionate reason.
Job 20:4
Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth? These words scarcely “imply cognizance of the record (of the creation of man) in Genesis,” as Canon Cook suggests; but they do imply belief in a creation of man, not an evolution; and in the existence of a continuous tradition, extending from that time to Job’s. The passage is among those which make for the high antiquity of the book.
Job 20:5
That the triumphing of the wicked is short (comp. Psa 37:35, Psa 37:36; Psa 51:1-5; Psa 73:17-19, etc.). This is one of the main points of dispute between Job and his opponents. It has been previously maintained by Eliphaz (Job 4:8-11; Job 5:3-5; Job 15:21, Job 15:29) and by Bildad (Job 8:11-19), as it is now by Zophar, and may be regarded as the traditional belief of the time, which scarcely any ventured to question. His own observation, however, has convinced Job that the fact is otherwise. He has seen the wicked “live, become old, and remain mighty in power” (Job 21:7); he has seen them “spend their days in wealth,” and die quietly, as “in a moment” (Job 21:13). In Job 24:2-24 he seems to argue that this is the general, if not universal, lot of such persons. Later on, however, in Job 27:13-23, he retracts this view, or, at any rate, greatly modifies it, admitting that usually retribution does even in this life overtake the wicked. And this seems to be the general sentiment of mankind.
“Raro antecedentem scelestum,
Deseruit pede poena claudlo.”
(Horace, ‘Od.,’ Job 3:2, ll. 31, 32.)
There remains, however, the question whether the triumphing of the wicked can fairly be considered “short,” and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. When we consider the lives of Dionysius the elder, Sylla, Marius, Tiberius, Louis XIV; Napoleon, it is difficult to answer this question in the affirmative.
Job 20:6
Though his excellency mount up to the heavens. “Though he reach,” i.e; “the highest pitch of prosperity” (comp. Psa 73:9). And his head reach unto the clouds (comp. Dan 4:22, “Thou, O king, art grown and become strong: and thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven“).
Job 20:7
Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung. Some understand “his own dung-heap,” regarding the “ashes” of Job 2:8 as, in reality, a heap of refuse of all kinds; but it is simpler to suppose a plainer and more vulgar taunt. They which have seen him shall say, Where is he? i.e. “Whither hath he gone? What is become of him?” (comp. Isa 37:36).
Job 20:8
He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found; i.e. “as a dream flies, when one awaketh” (see Psa 73:20; Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8). Yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. A “vision of the night” is perhaps something more than a “dream;” but it is equally fugitive, equally unstable-with morning it wholly vanishes away.
Job 20:9
The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; or, the eye which scanned him. The verb used () is a rare one, occurring only here, in Job 28:7, and in So Job 1:6. In the former passage it is used of a falcon, in the latter of the sun. Neither shall his place any more behold him (comp. Psa 103:16, “The place thereof shall know it no more”).
Job 20:10
His children shall seek to please the poor. Another rendering is, “The poor shall oppress his children,” since the meaning of the verb is doubtful. But the translation of the Authorized Version seems preferable. His children will curry favour with the poor, either by making restitution to them on account of their father’s injuries, or simply because they are friendless, and desire to ingratiate themselves with some one. And his hands shall restore their goods (comp. Job 20:15 and Job 20:18). He himself will be so crushed and broken in spirit that he will give back with his own hands the goods whereof he has deprived the poor. The restitution, i.e; will be made, in many cases, not by the oppressor’s children, but by the oppressor himself.
Job 20:11
His bones are full of the sin of his youth; literally, his bones are full of his youth; i.e. lusty and strong, full of youthful vigour. There is no sign of weakness or decay about them. Yet they shall lie down with him in the dust. A little while, and these vigorous bones, this entire body, so full of life and youth, shall be lying with the man himself, with all that constitutes his personality, in the dust of death (comp. Job 20:24, Job 20:25).
Job 20:12, Job 20:13
Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth; i.e. though the wicked man delight in his wickedness, and gloat over it, and keep the thought of it in his mind, as a gourmand keeps, so long as he can, a delicious taste in his mouth; though he, as it were, hide it under his tongue, in order not to let it escape him; though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth, yet, notwithstanding all this, disgust and nausea arrive in course of time (see the next two verses). It is, perhaps, the most surprising among the phenomena of wickedness that men can gloat over it, voluntarily recur to it, make a boast of it, recount signal instances of it to their friends, and seem to find a satisfaction in the recollection. One would have expected that shame and self-disapproval and fear of retribution would have led them to dismiss their wicked acts from their thoughts as soon as possible. But certainly the fact is otherwise.
Job 20:14
Yet his meat in his bowels is turned. Still, a time comes when the self-complacency of the wicked man is shaken. He experiences a failure of health or spirits. Then, suddenly, it is as if the meat that he has swallowed had been turned to poison in his bowels, as if the gall of asps were within him. Compare what Bishop Butler says of the sudden waking up of a man’s conscience. The ancients seem to have known that the poison of serpents was a strong acid, and therefore supposed that it was secreted by the gallbladder (see Pliny, ‘Hist. Nat.,’ 11:37).
Job 20:15
He hath swallowed down riches and he shall vomit them up again. The wicked man shall be made to disgorge his ill-gotten gains. Either fear, or remorse, or a judicial sentence will force him to make restitution (see Job 20:10). God shall cast them out of his belly. Whatever is the immediate motive of the restitution: it will really be God’s doing. He will cause the fear, or the remorse, or bring about the judicial sentence.
Job 20:16
He shall suck the poison of asps. Probably Zophar does not affix any very distinct meaning to his threats. He is content to utter a series of fierce-sounding but vague menaces, which he knows that Job will regard as launched against himself, and does not care whether they are taken metaphorically or literally. Job will be equally distressed in either ease. The viper’s tongue shall slay him. It is really the viper’s tooth, and not his tongue, that slays; but Zophar is not, any more than Job (Job 27:18), an accomplished naturalist.
Job 20:17
He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks. The wicked man shall suffer, not only positive pains, but what casuists call the poena damni, or “penalty of loss”deprivation, in other words, of blessings which he would naturally have enjoyed but for his wickedness. Zophar here threatens him with the Joss of those paradisiacal delights which the Orientals associated with water in all its forms, whether as , or “rills derived from larger streams,” or as , “rivers,” or as , “brooks” or “torrents,” now strong and impetuous, now reduced to a mere thread These are said poetically to flow with honey and butter, not, of course, in any literal sense, such as Ovid may have meant, when, in describing the golden age, he said
“Flumina jam lactis, jam fiumina nectaris ibant;”
(‘Metaph.,’ 1.111.)
but as fertilizing the land through which they ran, and so causing it to abound with bees and cattle, whence would be derived butter and honey. Compare the terms in which Canaan was described to the Israelites (Exo 3:8, Exo 3:17; Exo 13:5; Deu 26:9, Deu 26:15, etc.).
Job 20:18
That which he laboured for he shall restore. Even that which he gets by his own honest labour he shall have to part with and give up. He shall not swallow it down; i.e. “shall not absorb it, and make it his own.” According to his substance shall the restitution be. So Schultens, Professor Lee, and Dr. Stanley Leathes, who understand Zophar as asserting that, in order to compensate those whom he has robbed, the wicked man will have to make over to them all the wealth that is honestly his Others translate, “According to the substance that he hath gotten, he shall not rejoice” (see the Revised Version, and the commentaries of Ewald, Delitzsch, and Dillmann).
Job 20:19
Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor. These charges are now for the first time insinuated against Job; later on, they are openly brought by Eliphaz (Job 22:5-9). Job denies them categorically in Job 29:11-17. They seem to have been pure calumnies, without an atom of foundation. Because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not. Another calumny, doubtless. Something like it was insinuated by Eliphaz in Job 15:28.
Job 20:20
Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly; rather, became he knew no quietness in his belly‘ or within him (see the Revised Version); i.e. because his greed and his rapacity were insatiablehe was never at rest, but continually oppressed and plundered the poor more and more (see the comment on Job 20:19). He shall not save of that which he desired; or, he shall not save aught of that wherein he delighteth (see the Revised Version). For his oppression, for his violence, for his insatiable greed, he shall be punished by retaining nothing of all those delightful things which he had laid up for himself during the time that he was powerful and prosperous
Job 20:21
There shall none of his meat be left; rather, there was nothing left that he detoured not, or nothing remained over from his eating (Schultens). Scarcely intended literally, as Canon Cook supposes. Rather said in reference to the wicked man’s persistent oppression and robbery of the poor, the needy, and the powerless (comp. Job 20:19, Job 20:20; and note our Lord’s words, “Ye devour widows’ houses,” Mat 23:14). Therefore shall no man look for his goods. This is an impossible rendering. Translate, with Rosenmuller, Canon Cook, Stanley Leathes, and our Revisers, therefore his prosperity shall not endure. In other words, a Nemesis shall overtake him. For his oppression and cruelty he shall be visited by the Divine auger; a sudden end shall be made of his prosperity, and he shall fall into penury and misfortune. Covert allusion is, no doubt, intended to Job’s sudden loss of his extraordinary prosperity by the series of calamities so graphically portrayed in Job 1:13-19.
Job 20:22
In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits. Even while his wealth and prosperity remain, he shall find himself in difficulties, since every hand of the wicked (or rather, the hand of every one that is wretched) shall come upon him; i.e. all those who are poor and miserable, especially such as he has made poor and miserable, shall turn against him, and vex him.
Job 20:23
When he is about to fill his belly (comp. Job 20:12-18); i.e. “when he is on the point of making some fresh attack upon the weak and defenceless.” God shall east the fury of his wrath upon him (comp. Psa 78:30, Psa 78:31, where a far less harmful lust is noted as having brought down the Divine vengeance). And shall rain it upon him while he is eating; or, as his food (comp. Psa 11:6, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup”).
Job 20:24
He shall flee from the iron weapon. This is no indication of the late authorship of Job. Iron was in use in Egypt at a very early date. A thin plate of it was found by Colonel Howard Vyse embedded in the masonry of the great pyramid; and iron implements and ornaments, iron spear-heads, iron sickles, iron gimlets, iron keys, iron bracelets, iron wire, have been found in the early tombs not infrequently. That they are not more common is accounted for by the rapid oxidization of iron by exposure to the air, and its rapid decay in the nitrous soil of Egypt. The inhabitants of South-Western Asia were at no time much behind the Egyptians in their knowledge of the useful arts: and iron appears as a well-known metal in the Jewish Scriptures from the time of the Exodus (see Num 35:16; Deu 3:11; Deu 4:20; Deu 8:9; Deu 28:23; Jos 8:31). It is true that the principal weapons of war continued to be made ordinarily of bronze, both in South-Western Asia and in Egypt, till a comparatively late period; but Zophar may mean to assign to the slayer of the wicked man weapons of a superior character. And the bow of steel shall strike him through. It is uncertain whether steel was known in the ancient world. But, whether or no, “steel” is not meant here. The word used in the original is nehushtah, which undoubtedly means either “copper” or “bronze.” As copper would be too soft a material for a bow, we may assume bronze to be intended. The bronze used in Egypt was extremely elastic, and there would have been little difficulty in fashioning bows of it (on the existence of such bows, see 2 Samuel 26:5; Psa 18:34).
Job 20:25
It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; rather, he draweth it forth‘ and it cometh out of his body (see the Revised Version). The stricken man draws the arrow from his flesh, the natural action of every one so wounded. If the arrow was simply tipped with a smooth iron point, it would be easy to withdraw it; but a barbed arrow could only be cut out. Yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall; rather, the glittering point. The arrow is supposed to have pierced the gall-bladder, and to be drawn forth from it. There would be little chance of recovery in such a case. Hence terrors are upon him.
Job 20:26
All darkness shall be hid in his secret places; literally, all darkness is reserved for his treasures‘ which some understand of his hidden earthly treasures, which no one shall ever findsome of the retribution laid up for him by God, which will be such darkness as Job describes in Job 10:21, Job 10:22. A fire not blown shall consume him; i.e. “a fire lighted by no human hands,” probably lightning or brimstone from heaven (Job his tent, i.e. in his dwelling. His wife, his children, if he has any, and his domestics, shall be involved in the general ruin.
Job 20:27
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him. This is Zophar’s reply to the appeal which Job made (in Job 16:18, Job 16:19) to heaven and earth to bear their witness in his favour. Heaven, he says, instead of testifying to his innocence, will one day, when the books are opened (Rev 20:12), “reveal his iniquity;” and earth, instead of echoing his cry, will “rise up” in indignation “against him.” He will have none either in heaven or earth to take his part, or give any testimony in his favour.
Job 20:28
The increase of his house shall depart. “The increase of his house” may be either his children and descendants; or his substancethat which he has accumulated. In the former case, the departure spoken of may be either death (see Job 20:26), or carrying into captivity; in the latter, general rapine and destruction. And his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. It seems to be necessary to supply some such nominative as “his goods,” or “his treasure,” (see Job 20:26). These shall “flow away,” i.e. melt and disappear, “in the day of his wrath,” i.e. the day when wrath comes upon him.
Job 20:29
This is the portion of a wicked man from God; i.e. the lot, or possession of a wicked manthat which God makes over to him as his own in the last resort, and which is all that he has to look for. In other words, it is the heritage appointed unto him by God (comp. Job 27:13). As to some God, at the last, will assign an inheritance of good, so to others he will appoint an inheritance of evil
HOMILETICS
Job 20:1-29
Zophar to Job: an orthodox champion to the rescue.
I. AN IMPETUOUS ORATOR PERTURBED. Threatened with Divine vengeance, Zophar advances to the combat in hopes of utterly confounding his antagonist. His appearance, manner, and address are characterized by:
1. Bold defiance. “Therefore,” i.e. in view of what you have just spoken; nay, “nevertheless,” i.e. in spite of all your grandiloquent talk about a sword. Zophar had been unmoved, equally by Job’s pathetic wail depicting his abandonment by God and man, and by Job’s sublime utterance respecting his Divine-human Goel. Job’s prayer for a drop of human pity had made no impression on his flinty bosom. Job’s suggestion that the law of retribution they so vehemently preached might one day receive unexpected illustration in themselves (Job 19:29) had touched him to the quick. Accordingly, to hide the writhings of his lacerated spirit, he assumes an aspect of courage which he does not possess.
2. Extreme perturbation. The inward agitation of his spirit he betrays in his language. His cogitations were confused. His “thoughts” shot up in all directions from his heart like the manifold and intricate ramifications of a tree (cf. Job 4:16). The word strikingly represents the mind’s activity under violent excitement. The soul of Zophar was perplexed. Job’s discourse had possessed the merit of enlisting the attention, if not the sympathy, of his hearer. It had moved the feelings, if it had not convinced the judgment. And Zophar, if he did not listen with a loving spirit, at least did not hearken with a vacant mind. Yet, considering the mental disturbance which Job’s speech had produced, Zophar would have acted prudently had he maintained a discreet silence. Troubled thoughts seldom fashion wise or weighty words; and, though vehement emotion, especially when under control, is of immense advantage to an orator, yet an intellect deranged by passion is divested of whatever power of conviction it might otherwise possess.
3. Indecent haste. Whether or not a pause usually intervened between the different speeches in this controversy, Zephyr would appear to have been exceptionally impatient to smite his adversary, and to have rushed into the arena of debate like a war-horse neighing for the battle. If the rush of feeling and the multitudinous array of ideas which Job’s words provoked did not “cause him to answer” (verse 2), they at least furnished him with what seemed a crushing rejoinder to the outspoken insolence to which he had been compelled to listena rejoinder made and ready, so that he required not to meditate, but simply to “follow the suggestions of his thoughts as fast as they arose” (Carey), which he did. It had been better infinitely that Zophar had exercised a little self-restraintbetter for his own credit, since “he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly” (Pied. 14:29), since even good men are prone to err when they speak in haste (Psa 116:11), since it is the part of a wise man to “refrain his lips” (Pro 10:19), and the commandment of God to “be not rash with one’s mouth” (Ecc 5:2), but to be “swift to hear, slow to speak” (Jas 1:19), and since “there is more hope of a fool than of him that is hasty in his words” (Pro 29:20); and it would have been better for Job’s comfort, since hasty words are seldom kindly words.
4. Virtuous resentment. Zophar, “the very pink and pattern of orthodoxy” (Cox), had been threatened with the sword. He had perfectly understood what Job meant by brandishing (metaphorically, of course) that lethal weapon before his eyes. It was designed as a “check of his reproach” (verse 3), a reprimand to overwhelm him with disgrace, which he, Zophar, now hurled back upon the speaker with indignant scorn. The wounding of Zophar’s self-esteem had been a more serious offence on Job’s part than the striking at his faith. Zophar “one of those hot-heads who pretend to fight for religion that is imperilled, while in reality” they are “only zealous for their own wounded vanity” (Delitzsch). Instead of answering Job’s arguments, which doubtless he could not, he wipes out, or imagines he wipers out, the gratuitous dishonour done to his reputation as an orthodox believer by vehement reassertion of the current faith. It is usual for those who cannot reply to an opponent’s objections to indulge in personal invectives and extravagant assertions.
5. Wonderful conceit. Zophar practically informs Job that if he (Zophar) does not confound him (Job) and his heretical doctrines, it is not for want of ability to do so. “The spirit of his understanding,” i.e. the inner light of his intellectual discernment, the spirit emanating from the keen faculty of perception which he knows to be within him, furnishes him with all the information requisite for such a purpose. Now, doubtless, “there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding” (Job 32:8); but “this also is a vanity” which may be witnessed beneath the sun, that they who have the least of such understanding not unfrequently suppose themselves to have the most, while they who have the most are the least inclined to praise themselves on its account.
II. THE ORTHODOX FAITH REASSERTED.
1. With sarcastic sunrise. Zophar professes astonishment that Job required to be instructed on so obvious a point as the Divine law of retribution, considering
(1) what a wise man Job was: “Knowest thou not this?” thou who knowest everythingan obvious allusion to Job 19:25; and
(2) what an old law it was, having been “of old, since man was placed upon the earth.” and therefore surely not beyond the cognizance of a man who could look to the world’s end. Zophar’s irony was clever, but not kind.
2. With evident relish. With ill-concealed gusto Zophar repeats the popular dogma of the day, that “the triumphing of the wicked is near [literally, ‘is from near’], and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment,” adding that “though his excellency,” or exaltation, “mount up into heaven, yet shall he perish for over;” words suggestive of
(1) the superficial character of the irreligious man’s happiness, which is commonly derived from things at hand, the creature-comforts by which he is surrounded;
(2) the short-lived duration of the wicked man’s hope, which is only “from near,” i.e. of recent origin, and continues but a little space, being doomed to perish at the close of life’s brief day at the furthest;
(3) the seeming elevation of the hypocrite’s piety, which often appears to wear an extraordinary aspect of sanctity, setting its head among the clouds, while common saints have much ado to walk upon the earth without stumbling (Isa 65:5; Mat 23:14; Luk 18:11);
(4) the absolute certainty of the ungodly man’s overthrow, since he shall yet be cast down from the loftiest position of security to the lowest depths of degradation (Isa 14:13-15; Amo 9:2; Oba 1:4);
(5) the terrible completeness of the sinner’s destructionhe shall perish, and that for ever. Had Zophar been a man of tender spirit, instead of a fierce and fiery bigot, he would not have exulted with such fiendish delight in a doom so appalling even in imagination.
3. With varied illustration.
(1) A coarse metaphor. The wicked man shall perish “like his own dung,” i.e. with abhorrence and contempt (1Ki 14:10; 2Ki 9:37; Psa 83:10; Jer 8:2)a sentiment which, although not conveyed in polite language, is sometimes verified in this world in the case of notorious transgressors, and in the next world will certainly prove true of all the ungodly.
(2) An impressive image. The prosperous wicked man is likened to an unsubstantial dream, which, with its magical phantasmagoria, highly excites the fancy of the sleeper, but which vanishes, when night is passed, into the limbo of oblivion. What Zophar here affirms of the individual is true of men generally. The sinful life is a tremendous unreality; it may often assume imposing shapes, fascinating to beholders; but, after all, is only a pretentious shadow, which will disappear when, at the dawning of eternal day, the good man awakes. The pious life alone has solidity and continuance.
(3) A borrowed text. Zophar plagiarizes a sentiment (Job 19:9) from a previous address of Job (Job 7:8, Job 7:10). When preachers appropriate the thoughts of others, they should carefully acknowledge to whom they are indebted for their wisdom or eloquence.
(4) A solemn reflection. That when a wicked man dies he commonly bequeaths a legacy of shame to his descendants, his children being obliged “to please the poor” (verse 10), i.e. to court the favour of the destitute whom his rapacity has impoverished, and, in his name, so that it might actually be held to be by his hands, to “restore the goods” of those whom his covetousness and oppression have redfaced to beggary. Nothing is more certain than that a father’s ungodliness is often visited upon his family (Eze 18:2)an argument for parental piety; that the whirligig of time brings strange revenges upon sinners, punishing them by the very inflictions they entailed on others, e.g. reducing their children to beggary as they had reduced the children of others (1Sa 15:33)a proof of God’s overruling providence; that ill-gotten gain seldom proves a blessing to its possessors, mostly bringing misery into a man’s house instead of felicity (Gen 13:11)a caution against covetousness; and that God frequently compels the restitution of wealth unjustly acquired, sometimes by the power of grace (Luk 19:8), sometimes by the anguish of remorse (Mat 27:3-5), sometimes by the hand of death (Psa 39:6), sometimes by the superior craft of others (Gen 30:37)a reason for honest dealing.
(5) A cruel innuendo. That Job had been wicked in his youth, that Job’s bones were even then full of the secret lusts of his early manhood, that at least his physical disease was the direct retribution of his previous excesses, and that these, his unrepented crimes, were about to descend with him to his grave (verse 11). Though not applicable to Job, at whom all commentators are agreed it is pointed (cf. Job 13:26; Job 17:15, Job 17:16), the language conveys a solemn warning as to youthful indulgence in sin,
(a) its proneness to progress and develop into a licentious and profligate old age;
(b) its tendency to avenge itself in time in a diseased body, an enfeebled mind, a premature death; and
(c) its certainty, unless repented of, abandoned, and forgiven, to lie down with the transgressor in his grave, ay, to accompany him beyond the grave into the unseen world of eternity.
III. AN APPROVED DOCTRINE ENFORCED.
1. The picture of a sinful epicure. (Verses 12-18.)
(1) The wicked man’s estimate of sin. He regards it as a dainty which communicates to his soul the same gratification that delicious viands do to tide palate. A melancholy proof of the degradation into which man has sunk, that that which God pronounces an abomination he should contemplate with approbation; that a nature which God formed to find its happiness in holy fellowship with himself should experience pleasure in disobedience. Yet to the carnal mind all sin possesses more or less a relish, while some forms of indulgence, such as intemperance in eating and drinking, inordinate ambition and avarice, devotion to the frivolous, and often wicked, amusements of fashionable life, are attended with at least a seeming satisfaction.
(2) The wicked man’s delight in sin. He deals with it as an epicure does with a daintykeeping hold of it as long as he is able, seeking to extract from it as much sweetness as possible, “hiding it under his tongue, sparing it and forsaking it not, but keeping it still in the middle of his palate” (verses 12, 13); as a glutton does with delicious food, eagerly devouring it, gulping it down with avidity, swallowing it with greediness (verse 15), gormandizing and stuffing himself with the tasty viands with the voracity of a beasta description applicable to the drunkard (Pro 23:20, Pro 23:21), the debauchee (Pro 7:22), the covetous man (Isa 5:8; Isa 56:11).
(3) The wicked man’s recompense from sin. He shall be filled with misery by that in which he formerly delighted, as if the pleasant food of which he had partaken had been changed in his stomach into the gall of asps (verse 14). “Though wicked men relish sin at the time, roll it as a sweet plum in the mouth, and feel its deliciousness, the issue will be agony; it will turn into wormwood, it will rankle as a hellish virus in every vein of the soul” (Thomas). He shall be taken with a loathing for that which he formerly desired, viz. riches, which shall compel him to disgorge that which he gulped down with greediness (verse 15); nay, what he toiled so hard to obtain he shall not be permitted to retain, but shall be obliged to restore without having experienced from it any real enjoyment (verse 18). Though conveying a cruel and malicious insinuation that Job’s wealth had been unjustly acquiredwhich it was notyet the sentiment is often true, especially of riches, that that which men pursue with avidity and accumulate with eager anticipations of delight, seldom realizes the expectations it excites, often fills its possessors with disgust, and must eventually be given up, if not before, at least at death (Ecc 6:2; cf. ‘Measure for Measure,’ act 3. sc. 1). He shall be slain by the very thing which he supposed should be his life, the sweet morsel of sin which he sucked turning out to be the poison of asps, and as the deadly bite of a viper. So sin ever carries retribution in its own bosom. The fair fruit which was expected to make Adam and Eve wise as gods left them overwhelmed with guilty shame (Gen 3:7); Samson’s amorous dalliance with Delilah conducted him to Gaza’s prison (Jdg 16:21); David’s sin with Bathsheba proved like molten fire within his veins (Psa 32:4; Psa 51:8); the wine-cup of the drunkard at last bites like a serpent and stings like an adder (Pro 23:32). He shall be excluded from any real happiness on earth. “He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter” (verse 17). Much more, it may be added, he shall not attain to the felicity of the future Paradise of God. “The river of life, the wine of the kingdom, the fruits of Paradise, the joys at God’s right hand, the pleasures for evermore,” are “all forfeited for the momentary pleasures of sin” (Robinson).
2. The picture of a powerful tyrant. (Verses 19-28.) The portrait intended for Job.
(1) The crimes laid to his charge are:
(a) Merciless oppression, in the threefold form of grinding down, forsaking, and robbing the poor (cf. Job 22:6, Job 22:7); conduct common in the era of the Preacher (Ecc 3:16) and in the days of primitive Christianity (Jas 2:6), though by no means infrequent in these times; conduct offensive in the sight of God and man (Ecc 6:8; Ecc 7:7), and wholly unbecoming in a good (Isa 33:15), but specially characteristic of a bad (Psa 55:3), man; conduct attaining its highest degree of wickedness when the poor oppress the poor (Pro 28:3), and certain to be fiercely avenged (Psa 35:10; Pro 22:16; Isa 3:15; Jer 22:16) by him who espouses the cause of the oppressed.
(b) Insatiable greed, being represented as one who felt no quietness in his belly, i.e. whose cravings knew no bounds (verse 20), and from whose covetousness nothing escaped (verse 21)a sin against which men are warned in the Decalogue (Exo 20:17), and saints in the gospel (Luk 12:15), and upon which woes are pronounced by the prophets (Isa 5:8; Jer 51:13; Mic 2:9.; Hab 2:6), and judgments by the apostles (Rom 1:29; 1Co 5:11; Eph 5:3, Eph 5:5; Heb 13:5; Jas 5:1-3; 2Pe 2:3).
(2) The doom predicted as his portion is exhibited as:
(a) Deceiving prosperity. He shall not be able to escape with that to which his soul clings as its dearest treasure (verse 20). Calamity shall overtake his accumulated spoil in spite of his most watchful care. His prosperity shall not continue (verse 21), but “in the fulness of his sufficiency” when rejoicing in abundance, “he shall be in straits” (verse 22), either dreading impending destitution, or being deprived of his property, as Job was, by the stroke of swift calamity. As no man’s riches can save him from peril (Psa 49:7), so neither can any man save his riches when God commands them to take wings and flee away (Pro 23:5). God can take a sinner from his wealth (Luk 12:20) as easily as a sinner’s wealth from him (Gen 19:29), or, permitting the wealth to remain, he can cause its possessor to feel in straits.
(b) Thickening adversity. “Every hand of the wicked [literally, ‘every hand of the wretched,’ i.e. every stroke that falls upon the wretched] shall come upon him.” He shall be assailed by every form of trouble; as e.g. Divine wrath in the midst of his enjoyment (verse 23)God, in order to fill his belly, raining down upon him the fiery glow of his indignation as he did upon the cities of the plain (Gen 19:24), upon the Israelites in the wilderness (Num 11:33; Psa 78:30, Psa 78:31), and, according to Zophar, upon Job (Job 1:16). Sudden destruction in the midst of his oppressions (verses 24, 25). Fleeing from an adversary, he is pierced in the back by an arrow from a bow of steel. Drawing the gleaming weapon from his body, the metal head of the arrow from his gall, terrors of approaching death or of a fearful conscience encompass him. So God sometimes causes the sinner to be struck down in the very act of his wickedness (Num 16:31; 2Sa 8:5; 2Ki 1:9, 2Ki 1:10; Act 5:5), and so are bold transgressors commonly transformed into cowards when death comes and conscience wakes. Complete annihilation of himself and his treasures (verse 26). Though concealed in the earth, these treasures will yet be laid bare by fire from heaven, which shall also burn up him and them (as the fire of God had already, literally, burnt up Job’s sheep and oxen, and was on the eve, metaphorically, of devouring himself), consigning both to a gloom darker than that which enshrouds the freebooter’s spoila doom reserved for the finally impenitent. Certain exposure of his wicked character and life (verse 27), not only heaven renouncing and abhorring the transgressor, but the earth also conspiring to ensure his detection. As certainly as God and the universe are on the side of saints (Rom 8:28), so certainly are they arrayed against the sinner. It was, perhaps, only poetry when Deborah and Barak sang that the heavenly powers fought for Israel, and the stars in their courses contended against Sisera (Jdg 5:20); it was superstition which made the Melitans imagine Paul to be a wicked wretch whom Divine vengeance suffered not to live (Act 28:4); it is plain prose and solemn truth when God says that heaven and earth are in league against the sinner. Final extinction for his house and its belongings in the day of wrath (verse 28), as appeared to be the case with Job, though it was not, and as will eventually be the case with the wicked, though they think not.
IV. A POWERFUL SERMON APPLIED.
1. The elements of truth in this conclusion. These are:
(1) That the wicked man has a portion or heritage, which he shall assuredly receive as the righteous reward of his ungodly life. Equally with the saint will the sinner be recompensed according to his works.
(2) That this portion or heritage is decreed for the wicked man by God. As God appoints to all men their earthly lots, so does he determine the lots of all in the life beyond.
(3) That this portion or heritage shall be bestowed upon him by the hand of God, so that his evading or eluding it will be wholly impossible.
2. The ingredients of error in this Conclusion.
(1) The wicked man’s portion is not always bestowed upon him on earth: the first mistake of Zophar.
(2) Even if bestowed on earth, it is not universally a heritage like that described above: Zophar’s second blunder.
(3) If, again, it was exactly as portrayed, it did not apply to Job: the third mistake of Zophar, and the worst of the three.
Learn:
1. That controversy, especially in religion (and politics), is seldom profitable, and almost always irritating.
2. That controversialists are commonly characterized more by exaggerated language than by convincing argumentation.
3. That no cause is advanced by either vulgarity of speech or personality of allusion.
4. That it is not uncommon for s careless reasoner to mistake a half-truth for a whole, an exceptional truth for a universal, an occasional truth for s perpetual.
5. That it is impossible for a wicked man to escape retribution, if not in this world, at least in the next.
6. That unpardoned sins are the worst grave that any man can lay his bones in.
7. That though sin may be attended with pleasure, it can never result in happiness.
8. That what prevents ultimate success to a sinner is the fact that God is against him.
9. That God knows when and how to strike his avenging blows so as to cause them to gall hardest on the object of his displeasure. 10. That the greatest calamity which can overtake a human soul is the wrath of God.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON
Job 20:1-29
Godless prosperity short-lived.
Here we have a new variation on the favourite theme of the friendsthe inconstancy of godless prosperity. “The jubilation of the wicked is but of short duration, and the joy of the profligate but a moment.” The wicked man is specially here described as a rich man, who greedily snatches at others’ property, and whose ill-gotten gains become a deadly consuming fire to him and all his. It is related to Eliphaz’s speech (Job 15:1-35.) as the superlative to the positive, and to Bildad’s (Job 18:1-21.) as the superlative to the comparative. Similar remarks to those, then, must here apply; and the description is in itself true, apt, and striking, but its evident animus against Job is fiercely unjust.
I. CENSURE OF JOB: INTRODUCTION OF THE THEME. (Verses 1-5.) “Therefore my thoughts reply to me, and hence comes the storm of my bosom. Must I hear correction that insults me? But my spirit out of my understanding gives me an answer”namely, of warning and chastisement to Job as a godless man (verses 1-3). Zophar then gives these suggestions of his spirit in the form of a question directed to Job: “Knowest thou this from eternity, since man was placed on the earth, that the triumph of the wicked endures but a short time, and the joy of the reprobate but a moment?” He is astonished that Job, as appears from his speeches, is unacquainted with this well-worn and familiar truth of experience (verses 4, 5).
II. DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEME. (Verses 6-29.)
1. “Though his glory mounts” to heaven, and his head reaches to the clouds (comp. Isa 14:13, Isa 14:14; Oba 1:4), like his dung he perishes for ever; they that saw him say, Where is he?” The coarsest and most contemptuous comparison seems to be purposely selected (verse 7). The next is that of the fugitive dream (verse 8; comp. Isa 29:7; Psa 73:20; Psa 90:5). Dreams and visions of the night! emptiest things! appearing to be something while they last, but leaving no trace behind when the sleeper wakes. The eye that has seen him shall see him no more; and the place where he seemed to move, a solid person of flesh and blood, beholds that figure no longer (nor. 9). The curse descends to his children; they are reduced to court the favour of humble folk, and they have to give up to their father’s creditors his ill-gotten wealth (verse 10). How often, though not without exception, do we see this to be the rule of lifethe beggary or the wealth of children is rooted in the wickedness or goodness of the parents (Exo 20:5; Psa 37:25)! Let him who would see his children happy beware of sin. “His bones were full of youthful strength, and with him it lies in the bed of dust” (verse 11).
2. The inconstant prosperity of the wicked under the figure of sweet food, but deadly poison. (Verses 12-16.) “Though evil tastes sweet in his mouth, he hides it under his tongue,” rolling it as a delicious morsel, he sparingly fosters it, and lets it not go, and keeps it back on his palate” (in five synonymous phrases the idea of the dwelling and gloating over the sweet morsel of sin is set forth, verses 12, 13); “yet his food is changed in his bowelsvipers’ poison is in his interior (verse 14). The riches he has swallowed God expels from his paunch. The drastic language betrays the energy and violence of Zophar’s feelings (verse 15). Then, recurring to the figure of verse 14, “the tongue of adders slays him”(Psa 140:3), the deadly bite replacing in the description the deadly draught (verse 16; Pro 23:32). So God turns men’s “pleasant vices” into whips and scourges for their backs (‘King Lear’). The sweet Dead Sea fruits that tempt the taste turn to ashes on the lips. Sinful pleasure turns to pain, It begins with sweetness, like sugar, but afterwards bites like a serpent (Pro 20:17; Sirach 21:2, et seq.).
3. (Verses 17-22.) “He may not see his pleasure in brooks, streams, floods of honey and cream” (verse 17). These are well-known biblical figures for luxury and fulness of prosperity (Exo 3:8, Exo 3:17). And where the classic poets describe the golden age these figures occur: “streams of milk, streams of nectar flowed” (Ovid, ‘Metam.,’ 1.111, sqq.; Theocr; ‘Id.,’ 5.124, sqq.; Virg; ‘Eel.,’ 4.30; Her; ‘Epod.,’ 16.47). “He gives back what he has gained, and enjoys it not; accord ing to the property of his barter he is not merry;” that is, in proportion as he employed unjust means of exchange, to obtain temporal goods and enjoyment, he does not rejoice in them, he must go without the mirth that he promised himself from them (verse 18). “For he crushed, and caused the lowly to he down.” With what tender regard does biblical morality and law treat the poor and defenceless! what indignation does it testify against the oppressor! “He snatched houses for himself, and built them not.” The meaning perhaps is, he built them not anew, did not succeed in rebuilding them according to his taste, because he could not possess them for a permanence (verse 19). “For he knew no rest in his belly.” “The way of peace” (Isa 59:8) is not for restless greed and selfish hardness to others’ sufferings to tread. “Therefore he will not escape with that which is dearest to him” (verse 20). “Nothing escaped his greed, therefore his possessions shall not continue” (verse 21). “In the fulness of his super fluity he comes into straits; every hand of the wretched comes upon him” (verse 22). The clamours of those whom he has wronged, the cries of the widows, the orphans, the poor, make a din in the ears of the bad man; their hands stretch forth to seize the goods of which he has defrauded them. It is a striking picture of retribution. Perhalps the most salient point in this description is that of the insatiableness of greed. “The dire dropsy increases by self-indulgence, nor expels the thirst, unless the cause of disease flees from the veins, and the watery languor from the pale body,” says Horace, in a noble ode on the use and abuse of riches. “You shall more widely rule,” he says, “by taming the greedy spirit, than could you join Libya to far-off Gades” (‘Od.‘ 2.2). Riches cannot satisfy the soul, nor any earthly good, but only God (Ecc 1:8). The covetous temper finds as much want in what it has as in what it has not. No possessions, however great, can satisfy, us, until we have found the treasury of all good things in God. We are still little Alexanders, not content to rule over one worldgrieved to hear there are no more (Brenz).
4. End of the wicked man in accordance with the Divine judgment. (Verses 28-28.) “That it may serve for the filling of his belly, he causes his fiery wrath to fall upon him” (comp. Job 18:15). ion the figure of filling the belly, cf. verse 20; Luk 15:16.) “And causes to rain upon him with his food;” that is, his food, the wages of his sin, is the just punishment from God (Luk 15:23). The description goes on to point out the means by which the wrathful judgment of Heaven is executed (Luk 15:24, sqq.).
(1) Warlike examples: pursuit and wounds. “He flees from the iron harness, the brazen bow pierces him” (Jdg 5:26). He draws the arrow from his body (Jdg 3:22), and the shining steel comes out of his gall; the terrors of death come upon him (Luk 15:25). Then
(2) some further descriptions of the Divine judgment, especially with reference to the property of the wicked. “All darkness is reserved for his treasures.” His hoards are exposed to every casualty. He finds that he has been “treasuring up for himselfwrath!” (Rom 2:5). A fire that no human hands have kindled devours him, destroying the relies of former judgments (Luk 15:26). “The heavens disclose his guilt, and earth rises against him” (Luk 15:27). A striking contrast to Job 16:18, Job 16:19, where Job had appealed to heaven and earth as witnesses of his innocence. Thus denied and cast from both, the only place for the wicked is in Sheol, or Hades. The produce of his house must pass away, like wrecks floating down a flood, in the day of God’s wrath (verse 28).
CONCLUSION. “Such is the lot of the wicked man from God, and the heritage allotted to him by God” (verse 29). The witness of nature against the sinnerthis is the most powerful concluding thought in this awe-striking address. Nature seems to be unconscious of men’s guilt, as of their virtues. The leaves of the forest do not shudder, the bright blue sky is not overcast, the earth does not quake when deeds of crime are done. Yet that majestic order represented by heaven and earththe order which finds its reflection in the conscience of mancannot be violated with impunity. It will avenge itself in the end. And we see from time to time striking types and prophecies of this in the way by which crime is detected from the traces left on the face of nature, or by the clues afforded by natural law. The light of day reveals the deed of the night-time, and the earth gives up her dead. If all sins thus leave some record, what rest or peace could there be for the guilty conscience except in the gospel, which assures us that in Christ the sins of the penitent and believing are “covered,” and that his blood cleanseth from all sin?J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN
Job 20:5-20
The temporary triumph of the wicked.
Zophar now comes forth with wise words; but they are as arrows, slender, strong, and sharp, which, though drawn upon a strong bow, yet miss their mark. Only too true is his assertion of the brevity of the triumph of the evil-doer, the momentary joy of the hypocrite; only too accurate his forcible setting forth of the state and portion of the ungodly. Job has to hear again cruel words. His patient faith has yet to be further tested; his final triumph is postponed.
I. HIS HONOR IS TEMPORARY. If he raise himself so that “his head reach unto the clouds, yet he shall perish for ever;” “he shall fly away as a dream,” so short is his grasp of any position of honour.
II. HIS FAMILY PROSPERITY IS BUT BRIEF. The goods he has gained by his ungodliness “his hands shall restore,” and his children crouch to appease the poor. Ill-gotten gain is held by uncertain hands. For a time the ungodly seems to prosper, but it is that he may be consumed out of his place.
III. HIS LIFE IS WASTED AND PASSETH AWAY. Even his youthful vigour fails him. it shall speedily “lie down with him in the dust.” The practice of wickedness brings punishment on hint who offends. The tendency of wrong-doing is ever to prey upon the strength of the life.
IV. THE PLEASURES OF SIN TO HIM ABE BUT FOR A SEASON. Though he ‘hide” wickedness “under his tongue,” though it be “sweet in his mouth,” yet shall it be turned to “the gall of asps within him.”
V. THE POSSESSION OF RICHES IS PERMITTED ONLY FOR A BRIEF PERIOD. Though he swallow them down, “he shall vomit them up again.” Nothing has permanence with him. Changes come over him from sources he cannot trace and certainly could not foresee. His toil is fruitless. “That which he laboured for shall he restore he shall not rejoice therein.” Wickedness eats into the strength and joy of life. It exposes life to innumerable evils and robs it of its chief good. The wicked man has no pledge of permanent blessing. “He shall not save of that which he desired.” Truly “the triumphing of the wicked is short.”R.G.
Job 20:21-26
Disappointment to the wicked.
Even when all promises well to the wicked, evil shall lurk under cover of the seeming prosperity. When he is about to satisfy himself, suddenly he shall be in straits. His hopes shall be blasted, his strong confidence disappointed. With a singular cluster of strong figures Zophar depicts the unsatisfying position of the wicked man. He is in the midst of enemies. Every source of help and joy seems to fail him.
I. HE FINDS NO HELP IN MAN. “Every hand of the wicked shall come upon him.” Even they of his own way of thinking disappoint him. They turn upon him. An ungodly man can have no true confidence in his ungodly associates. Evil in them enables them to detect evil in him. The spirit which they know within themselves to be wrong and untrustworthy, unkind and evil-plotting, they know w be the same in him.
II. HE FINDS NO HELP IN GOD. “When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him.” The wicked, so long as he continues wicked, has nothing to hope for from God. It was the joyful boast of one assailed on every hand, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” So if God be “against” a man, of what avail is it that any are “for” him? God is the best of friends, the most mighty of enemies. Not that in the Divine heart are any sentiments of enmity against the children of men, but men turn blessings into curses by the way they use them- So men make an enemy of their best Friend.
III. HE FINDS NO HELP IN CIRCUMSTANCES. The iron weapon which he might have grasped he shall flee from; and the bow of steel which he might have drawn shall strike him through. “Terrors” seize him, “darkness” hides in his secret places, “a fire not blown” consumes him. He is encompassed by foes. All things are against him. Though he prosper, yet “in the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits.” “This is the portion of the wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God”R.G.
Job 20:27
The final testimony against ungodliness.
The wicked may hide himself “in his secret places,” but his iniquity will be revealed. He cannot escape. For a time he may prosper and may practise deceit; but ultimately his doings shall be made known and meet with their just retribution. The natural consequence of wrongdoing is to go on from bad to worse until at length it bursts all restraint. Even the dull eye of the neighbour will detect the prevailing wrong, but the keen eye of a Divine justice cannot be escaped. Evil outwits itself. Its fruit appears in due time. Faultiness of life and conduct make themselves apparent. But should it be possible wholly to hide iniquity through life, and to die with the dreadful secret locked in the breast of the wrong-doer, yet there still remains a revelation which cannot be evaded. “The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him.” This final testimony against ungodliness is.
I. INEVITABLE.
II. IMPARTIAL
III. DESERVED.
IV. SEVERE.R.G.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Job 20:5
The short triumphing of the wicked.
Zophar’s superficial view has truth in it as far as it goes. He is a man of the world, and he has kept his eyes open. What he has seen has been no illusion. It is not enough to explain the deeper mysteries of Job’s experience. Yet it has an obvious truth in it.
I. THERE IS A TRIUMPHING OF THE WICKED.
1. This is seen in experience. Even Zophar, who finds it not exactly in accordance with his ideas of providence, still cannot but admit that it exists. A swindler fattens on the spoils of the robbery of widows and orphans. A Napoleon dominates Europe.
2. It is important to recognize the fact. We must make our theories accord with our experience and observation of the world. It is useless to comfort ourselves in the seclusion of our private meditation with an easy optimism, if this will not fit in with the events of everyday life. If we are not prepared to expect the triumph of the wicked, the sight of it will strike us with a shock of dismay.
3. The triumphing of the wicked does present a difficulty. It is contrary to our notion of justice. No doubt the narrow, conventional notion of the three friends was founded on a genuine sense of right and fitness. If there is to be no future judgment, and if this temporal state is typical of the whole course of life, here is an instance of gross injustice. We must therefore face it, and inquire what it means.
II. THIS TRIUMPH IS SHORT. Zophar’s explanation is that the triumph will soon pass away, and will give place to overthrow and ruin.
1. This is seen on earth. As a rule, the swindler does not die rich. He usually outlives his gains. Great wickedness generally disappoints its owner. Napoleon finishing his career as an exile at St. Helena is typical of the most frequent end of a very bad course. But this is by no means a universal principle. The whole of a bad man’s life may be externally prosperous, right on to death.
2. This will be seen after death. We must extend our contemplation of the course of the wicked man. He dies, leaving wealth, pleasure, power, triumph, behind him. None of these can accompany him through the dark doors of death. He has laid up no treasures in the unseen world. There he is certainly beggared, and he has good ground for expecting the infliction of wellmented punishment. His short earthly life, but a moment when compared to eternity, is over, and with it all his triumphing has ceased.
III. THE SHORT TRIUMPH OF THE WICKED IS FALLACIOUS.
1. It is fallacious because its brevity is hidden. The foolish man who glories in it does not see how swiftly it is slipping away from him. A triumph which must soon give place to shame is not worth much to its owner.
2. It is fallacious because it gives no solid satisfaction. The wicked glee of triumphing in sin is quite superficial. Often its very excitement is only a result of restless discordant passions. It wears a bold front, but it covers a weary spirit. If there is a spark of conscience left there must be a haunting fearlike the mummy at the Egyptian feastthat spoils the pleasure.
IV. THE ONLY ENDURING TRIUMPH IS THAT WHICH FOLLOWS A TRULY CHRISTIAN LIFE.
1. This is solid. It begins with victory over sin and self, our greatest enemies.
2. It is assured. It is brought about by the work of Christ; it is just sharing in his victory; and Christ must triumph.
3. It is eternal. On earth there may be shame and humiliation, but in heaven Christians are called to the joy of victoryto be “more than conquerors” (Rom 8:37).W.F.A.
Job 20:12-17
The sweet taste of sin and its bitter after-taste.
I. THE SWEET TASTE OF SIN. How can we account for the tact that if sin is essentially an evil thing it should ever be attractive to us? Surely its natural hatefulness should make it repulsive. If it is hideous in the sight of God, by what witchery can it be made to appear fascinating to our eyes?
1. It appeals to our lower desires. It makes its first appeal to nature. There was no evil at first in Adam and Eve, and yet sin was made attractive to them. Christ could not have been tempted unless sin had been made to wear a fair mask in his presence. The bodily appetites and the self-seeking desires are natural and innocent in themselves. But they should be kept under by our higher nature. If, however, the tempter appeals to them directly, he appeals to the prospect of natural pleasure.
2. It is aided by our selfish nature. We are all fallen creatures. If the fall has not taken the form of sensuality, it has certainly been accomplished in selfishness. Now sin appeals to our selfish nature, and promises personal gratification at the expense of righteousness.
3. It is intensified by corrupted desires. Sin perverts the natural appetites and corrupts the most innocent desires. The wicked thing which is first sought because of some promised result comes to be loved on its own account. As the miser loves his money, so the sinner loves his sinfirst for what it can purchase, then on its own account. He is like a hypnotized person, to whom gall tastes like sugar, because he is deluded into believing evil to be his good.
II. THE BITTER AFTER–TASTE OF SIN. Zophar rightly enlarges upon this subject. We do not need any amplification of the delights of sin. The very presentation of them to the imagination is degrading. The soul is soiled by contemplating them. We are quite ready to admit their strength. But it is not so easy to imagine vividly and to keep well in view the dreadful after-results. They are remote, unattractive, uncongenial. Therefore we need to be forced to see the results of sin in detail. Zophar narrates them with graphic ragout. Let us, then, consider the disagreeable details of the bitter after-taste.
1. It is pain within. The morsel is sweet in the mouth, and it is hidden under the tongue to keep it safe and to prolong the delicious enjoyment of it; yet when it is swallowed it becomes like the gall of asps. The recollection of past sin is a pain of conscience. Its very delights are turned to bitterness in the after-thought. Just in proportion to their tempting fascination before the deed is their repulsiveness after it has been committed. The foolish victim of temptation looks back on his orgies with disgust. He loathes himself, he grovels in humiliation. How could he have been such a fool as to sink to this shame and degradation?
2. It results in the loss of future delights. The sinner is made to give up his fiches. He is denied “the brooks, the rivers, the torrents of honey and butter,” which he was greedily looking forward to. The justice of God will not permit him to revel for ever in wickedness. By his indulgence in sinful pleasures he has destroyed the faculty of innocent joy. His debauch has turned the garden of innocent delights into a desert. For such a man there is no hope but in complete regeneration. Yet that is possible. Even he can be converted, and made a new creature in Christ Jesus.W.F.A.
Job 20:19, Job 20:20
Oppressing the poor.
This is a sin most frequently referred to in the Bible, a common wrong against which the prophets of Israel continually pretested with vehement indignation. Christ, usually mild and gentle, spoke in great anger of this wickedness (Mat 23:14). St. James denounced it as not unknown among Christians (Jas 5:4).
I. THE SIN.
1. Its various forms. It is not always seen in the bare and open fashion of primitive times. The sheikh exacts more than is due from his tribe, the Eastern landowner grinds down his fellaheen, the baron enslaves and robs his serfs, and we denounce the manifest wrong. But is not the same evil to be seen in the more decorous injustice of modern Western civilization? The great body of working men is now emancipated from the tyranny of past ages, and is able to assert itself and claim its rights. But below this powerful class is a mass of unskilled workers, the helpless men and women who crowd the lower quarters of great citiesthe really poor. When advantage is taken of the poverty of these miserable people to grind them down, they are being robbed. With us the sweating system takes the place of the old territorial oppression.
2. Its invariable wickedness. Is the modern commercial oppression one whit less guilty than the old lordly tyranny? The evil is more disguised with us; it is more difficult to bring it home to its authors; our complicated civilization hushes it upyet the cruelty and wickedness are as real as ever.
II. THE PUNISHMENT. The writers of the Bible who denounced the sin of oppressing the poor continually threatened punishment to the guilty oppressors.
1. Direct loss. Zophar contemplates the actual loss of ill-gotten gains. This may happen in the present life. It will certainly occur at death. The oppressor can take none of the profits of his cruelty out of the world with him.
2. Disappointment. In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits. Even without the loss of property difficulties will arise. The rich man may be murdered in his palace. Most oppressors live in fear. Trouble of mind mingles like gall in the sweetest cup of pleasures got by cruelty.
III. THE CURE. Punishment is not cure. The fear of it may act as somewhat of a check. But we must go deeper for “the root of the matter” if we would cure it. Now undoubtedly in this case the root is not hard to find, for it is simply unmitigated selfishness. Therefore until men can be taught to substitute brotherliness for selfishness, oppression of the poor must continue. No social revolution, no legal enactment, no forcible change, can eradicate the evil. We must go for the cure of social evils to Christ. He is concerned with society as well as with the individual, and there is no hope for society until he is recognized as its Saviour and its Lord. Christianity instils brotherliness. No man can be a Christian who is destitute of this grace. Oppression of the poor belies the most sanctimonious profession of religion. We want to get back to the religion, of Christ, which made more of brotherliness than even of faith; the religion of St. Paul and St. John, which taught that love is the greatest thing in the world.W.F.A.
Job 20:22
Straitened in the time of fulness.
I. SUDDEN DISASTER. This had come upon Job. It looks as if the pragmatic Zophar was rude enough to insinuate that the picture he was painting would be recognized by the patriarch as a portrait of himself. Now, the external part of the picture was true to the circumstances of Job. Therefore the broad hint that the internal part also applied to him was the more cruel. Job’s sufferings were extreme, but they were not contrary to precedent. Sudden disaster is not unknown. The rich man is beggared by an unexpected commercial collapse. An epidemic or a storm at sea suddenly bereaves a father of his whole family. Death snatches the prosperous person away at the height of his success.
1. This is not expected. Although it is not uncommon, people are generally unprepared for it; and when it comes they are astounded and dismayed. We are deceived by present appearances. It is difficult to believe in the overthrow of that which gives no sign of being in danger.
2. This is crushing. The pain of a fall is determined by the height from which one descends as much as By the depth that is reach, d. The troubles of those who were once prosperous are far worse to bear than the troubles of people who do not know what earthly happiness means.
3. This should teach us to look beyond the present.
(1) In preparation for possible disaster. We should not, however, be always brooding over the possibility. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Still, we should be fortified against it.
(2) In the possession of better than earthly things. We can endure the shocks that strike our earthly tabernacle, if we have “a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2Co 5:1).
II. INTERNAL POVERTY. The ruin may take another form. There may be no such external and visible calamities as those that came upon Job. The normal coupe of events may be unbroken, the material prosperity may be unaffected. Yet there may be distress and misery. Then the soul is straitened although the fulness of earthly sufficiency is not touched.
1. This comes from our spiritual nature. The body has been fed, but the soul has been starved; therefore the soul is straitened. There are times when we perceive deeper needs than any earthly bread can satisfy; “for man shall not live by bread alone,” etc. (Mat 4:4).
2. This is felt in the awakening of conscience. A voice within calls us to a service for which our earthly sufficiency affords no rapport. On the contrary, the wealth of external things seems a sort of hindrance, distracting our thoughts and absorbing our care when we should be turning to more spiritual affairs. The spiritual nature, once aroused, feels cramped and oppressed by the very fulness of earthly sufficiency.
3. This should drive us to the wells of living water. We are tempted to neglect those sources of spiritual life when the streams of earthly blessings flow in fulness. Yet nothing but the water of life can nourish the soul. Without this we are thirsty still. We are straitened that we may turn to Christ for the water which he gives, and for his bread of life.W.F.A.
Job 20:27
Iniquity revealed.
I. IT IS HIDDEN. Otherwise, of course, it would not need to be revealed. How is it hidden?
1. By secrecy. The sin is not committed in the light of day and before the eyes of a crowd. The wicked deed is done in the dark.
2. By circumstances. Events are such that the evil does not come out to the light. Snow falls and conceals the footprints of the thief.
3. By falsehood. Charged with his crime, the sinner denies it. For a while his lie is accepted, if there is no proof against him.
4. By negligence. It is not the business of everybody to be an amateur detective. The world lets much wickedness pass from sheer indifference.
II. IT WILL BE REVEALED.
1. Certainly in the future judgment. Then the secrets of all hearts shall be made known. God knows the wickedness that is hidden from man, for nothing can be concealed from his all-searching gaze. We are not only to expect that God will then punish sin. Further than this, there will be a general unveiling of character. The hypocrite will be unmasked. Everybody will be seen in his true nature.
2. Possibly on earth. Even here Heaven may reveal the iniquity. A providential turn of events may bring it all to light. Without any handwriting on the wall or any trumpet-toned annunciation, the slow and awful unrolling of providence may make the ugly story known.
III. ITS REVELATION WILL BE FOLLOWED BY ITS PUNISHMENT. This follows naturally: no avenging angel needs to be sent from heaven. “The earth shaft rise up against him.” It is as though the earth itself were horror-stricken at the sight of such enormity. She cannot bear the presence of the wicked man. Her silence would be like acquiescence, or even complicity, in his guilt. Nature itself works for the punishment of sin. The laws of nature are on the side of righteousness. They are God’s laws, and all the laws of God are in harmony. All that is needed is sufficient time and scope, and the course of nature itself will produce the punishment. We see this already in regard to sins of the flesh, which bring disease, misery, death. It will take longer time, and the free opportunities of another world, to bring about the same result with all other sins.
IV. ITS EARLIER CONFESSION WILL PREVENT LATER REVELATION. An this dark and direful doom is not inevitable. We are warned of it in order that we may avoid it. There is no necessity for us to wait for the Divine unveiling of our sin. Though that is certain to come if we do wait long enough for it; we may yet anticipate it by confession. God does not desire to expose the most guilty man to shame and suffering. His great wish is to conquer sin in the heart of the sinner. If the wickedness is owned and repented of, that is what God most wishes, and greatly prefers to the punishment of the impenitent. Not only does love yearn to save the sinner, but righteousness also desires to cast out the sill, as a more effectual conquest of it than merely punishing it while it is still retained in the heart of a man. Still, the thought of the impending revelation of sin shows how necessary an unreserved and complete confession is, if the sinner is to be forgiven. This is the first condition of pardon. While we hold to our sin, God cannot set us free from it and its consequences.W.F.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. XX.
Zophar sets forth at large the state and portion of the wicked.
Before Christ 1645.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
III. Zophar and Job: Ch. 2021
A.Zophar: For a time indeed the evil-doer can be prosperous; but so much the more terrible and irremediable will be his destruction
Job 20
1. Introductioncensuring Job with violence, and Theme of the discourse: Job 20:1-5
1Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said:
2Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer,
and for this I make haste.
3I have heard the check of my reproach,
and the spirit of my understanding causeth me to answer.
4Knowest thou not this of old,
since man was placed upon earth,
5that the triumphing of the wicked is short,
and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?
2. Expansion of the theme, showing from experience that the prosperity and riches of the ungodly must end in the deepest misery: Job 20:6-29
6Though his excellency mount up to the heavens,
and his head reach unto the clouds;
7yet he shall perish forever, like his own dung:
they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
8He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found;
yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
9The eye also which saw him shall see him no more;
neither shall his place any more behold him.
10His children shall seek to please the poor,
and his hands shall restore their goods.
11His bones are full of the sin of his youth,
which shall lie down with him in the dust.
12Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth,
though he hide it under his tongue;
13though he spare, and forsake it not,
but keep it still within his mouth:
14yet his meat in his bowels is turned,
it is the gall of asps within him.
15He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again:
God shall cast them out of his belly.
16He shall suck the poison of asps;
the vipers tongue shall slay him.
17He shall not see the rivers,
the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.
18That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down:
according to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein.
19Because he hath oppressed, and hath forsaken the poor;
because he hath violently taken away a house which he builded not;
20Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly,
he shall not save of that which he desired.
21There shall none of his meat be left;
therefore shall no man look for his goods.
22In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits;
every hand of the wicked shall come upon him.
23When he is about to fill his belly,
God shall cast the fury of His wrath upon him,
and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.
24He shall flee from the iron weapon,
and the bow of steel shall strike him through.
25It is drawn, and cometh out of the body;
yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall;
terrors are upon him!
26All darkness shall be hid in his secret places;
a fire not blown shall consume him;
it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
27The heaven shall reveal his iniquity;
and the earth shall rise up against him.
28The increase of his house shall depart,
and his goods shall flow away in the day of His wrath.
29This is the portion of a wicked man from God,
and the heritage appointed unto him by God.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. A new variation of the favorite theme of the friendsthe perishableness of the prosperity of the ungodly.The formula by which it is this time expressed is (Job 20:5): The triumphing of the wicked is of short duration, and the joy of the ungodly only for a moment. In the further development of this thought the wicked, who encounters inevitable destruction, is described as a rich man, who avariciously seizes on the possessions of others, and whose property, unjustly acquired, becomes the prey of an exterminating fire that destroys himself, and all that belongs to him. This on the one side links itself to the former description of Eliphaz, Job 15:25 seq., on the other side, however, it glances aside with malicious suspicion at the former prosperity of Job, the foundation of which the speaker would indicate as presumably impure and unrighteous.The discourse is divided into a short introduction (Job 20:2-5), and a discussion extending through four strophes of six verses each (in one instance of five), together with a closing verse, which stands as an isolated epiphonema.
2. Introduction, together with the theme of the discourse: Job 20:2-5.
Job 20:2. Therefore do my thoughts give answer to me.[, by some rendered still, yet, (Umbreit, Noyes, Rodwell), or truly, (Elzas), but incorrectly]. with Accus. of the person, as in Job 13:22 [E. V., cause me to answer, and so Frst, and this would correspond with Zophars eagerness to speak; but the other signification is the more common]. as in Job 4:13.And hence (comes) the storming within me.Lit. my haste in me: here in the sense of perturbatio; and in immediate connection with , and more precisely qualifying it, comp. Job 4:21.Both in a, and in b, point forward to the statement given in Job 20:3 of the cause of Jobs discontent and excitement. [On this account he feels called upon by his thoughts to answer, and hence his inward impulse leaves him no rest, because he hears from Job a contemptuous wounding reproof of himself. Ewald, Hahn, Wordsworth, etc., point backward to the closing menace of Jobs discourse (Job 19:29) as the cause of Zophars feeling]. , which is evidently separated from by the accentuation is used as a preposition = on account of, but without its complement. We must supply either (from in a), or ; comp. the similar elliptical use of in Isa 59:18. To connect immediately with : because of my storming (Del. because of my feeling) [because of my eager haste, Ges., Con., Carey, Noyes] within me, produces a less symmetrical structure for the verse, and a flatter sense.
Job 20:3. A chiding to my shame must I hear! Comp. Isa 53:5 [chastisement of our peace, i.e., which tends to our peace; so here, the chastisement or chiding which tends to my shame.The E. V.s rendering, check of my reproach is scarcely intelligible. Neither is I have heard sufficiently exact for the fut. , which means rather I have to hear.E.].Nevertheless the spirit out of my understanding gives me an answer; i.e., out of the fulness of its perception it furnishes me with information as to what is to be thought of Job with his insulting attacks (Delitzsch), viz., that he is to be warned and punished as an ungodly man. [E. V., , as Hiph. causeth me to answer; better as Kal answereth, and thus equivalent to , Job 20:2. This exordium is strikingly suggestive of the prominent traits of Zophars character; his mental discursiveness and vivacity, or perhaps volatility, indicated by , his thoughts shot forth in various directions; his eager impetuosity, , he could scarcely contain himself until Job had finished, and then broke out hotly; his proud sensitive egotism, especially prominent in Job 20:3 a, the chiding of my shame must I hear; his subjective self-sufficient dogmatismthe spirit out of my understanding gives answer. It is questionable whether here is to be taken as Renan explains, of the universal (not as he terms it impersonal) spirit (comp. Job 32:8), speaking in man. The dogmatic character of the speaker, and the prominence which he gives to his own personality, is not altogether in harmony with such a view. Moreover, Elihu is put forward by the poet as the representative of an internal revelation, even as Eliphaz represents the external. Zophar on the other hand represents the individual reason, as Bildad represents the collective traditional wisdom of the race. See Introduction.E.].
Job 20:4-5 present the substance of these communications of Zophars spirit in the form of a question addressed to Job.
Job 20:5. Knowest thou this indeed [either the question implying that the contrary would be inferred from Jobs language (Con.), or sarcastically, equivalent to: thou surely knowest; or in astonishment, what! dost thou not know! (Del.) hence it is unnecessary (with E. V., Ges., etc.), to supply the negative, = ] from eternity (i.e., to be true, , as a virtual adjective, or as a virtual predicate-accusative, Ewald 336, b), since man was placed upon the earth. Infinit. with an indefinite subject, since one placed [or, since the placing of] as in Job 13:9., not precisely a proper name, referring to the first man, but collective or generic; comp. Deu 4:32.
Job 20:5. That the triumphing of the wicked is short (lit., from near, i. e., not extending far; comp. Deu 32:17; Jer 23:23), and the joy of the ungodly only for a moment. in , like in 2Ki 9:22 expresses the idea of duration, during, for. The whole question is intended to convey doubt and wonder that Job, judging by his speeches, was entirely unacquainted with the familiar proposition touching the short duration of the triumphing of the wicked which is made the theme of what follows. [This is Zophars short and cutting rejoinder to Jobs triumphant outburst in Job 19:25 seq.That jubilant exclamation was, as Zophar indirectly suggests, a , that exulting joy a ].
3. The expansion of the theme: Job 20:6-29.
First Strophe: Job 20:6-11. [The wicked, however prosperous, perishes utterly, together with his family and acquisitions; he himself in the prime of life].
Job 20:6. Though his height ( from , comp. Psa 89:10) [i. e., his exaltation in rank and power] mount up to Heaven, and his head reach unto the clouds; comp, Isa 14:13 seq.; Oba 1:4. [, not causative (Del.), but parallel to , as to ].
Job 20:7. Like his dung he perishes forever; they who have seen him say: Where is he?The subj. here is the , Job 20:5 b, and so continues to the end of the de scription. , like his dung, from , globulus stercoris, Zep 1:17; Eze 4:12; Eze 4:15 (comp. , 1Ki 14:10). This comparison, which beyond a doubt expresses a meaning which is unfavorable and disgraceful to the ungodly man, refers to his own dung; in the same way that this is at once swept away, on account of its ill odor, so is he speedily removed by the Divine judgment (comp. Ezek. l.c.). In regard to the coarse harshness of the expression, comp. below, Job 20:15, as also Zophars former discourse, Job 11:12. [The word is not low, as Eze 4:12; Zep 1:17 shows, and the figure, though revolting, is still very expressive. Delitzsch]. The following explanations involve an unsuitable softening [and weakening] of the sense. (1) The attempt of Wetzstein in Delitzsch [I. 377 seq. adopted by Del. and Merx] to identify with the cowdung heaped up for fuel in the dwelling of the wicked. (2) The attempt of Schultens, Ewald, Hirz., Heiligst., [Con.], to read , according to his greatness, in proportion as he was great, from , magnificentia, majestas [Good (followed by Wemyss) adopts this with the additional amendment of to , understanding the passage to teach that the wicked perishes in the midst of his greatness]. (3) The unfounded translation of the Syriac: like the whirlwind [regarding , or as = , and so Frst, who however defines it to mean chaff. Either of these renderings, as well as Wetzsteins, makes the suffix superfluous.E.]. (4) The equally untenable rendering of some of the Rabbis (as Gekatilia, Nachamanides): as he turns himself, or in turning around, as one turns the hand around.
Job 20:8. As a dream he flies away [and is no more to be found: and he is scared away as a vision of the night].For the use of dream and night-vision ( as in Job 4:13 [so everywhere in the book of Job instead of , from which it perhaps differs as visum from visio, Delitzsch]), as figures for that which is fleeting, quickly perishable, comp. Isa 29:7; Psa 73:20; Psa 90:5. , Hiph.: is scared away, to wit, by Gods judicial intervention; a stronger expression than the Active , he flies.
Job 20:9. An eye has looked upon him (been sharply fixed upon him; as in Job 28:7); it does it not again; comp. Job 5:3; Job 7:8; Job 8:18. [The verb is found in Son 1:6 in the sense of scorching, or making swarthy (cogn. adurere). Hence the signification of a fixed scorching look is attached to it by Delitzsch. It may at least be said of it that it means as much as our scan, or gaze upon. It is suggested perhaps by the lofty position, the heaven-touching, cloud-capped attitude of the wicked in Job 20:6. Such a height, which the sun would () look on, and cause to glow, the eye of man would () gaze on intently. The clause is thus equivalent to: There was a time when he was the observed of all observers, but it is so no moreE.].And his place beholds him no more., which is doubtless the subject of b, is here construed as a feminine, as in Gen 18:24; 2Sa 17:12.
Job 20:10. His children must seek to please the poor., 3d plur. Piel from = to propitiate, appease, synonymous with , an expression which is to be understood in a sense altogether general, and not specifically of asking alms [Barnes: they would be beggars of beggars] nor of appeasing by the use of money, although the second member approximates the latter meaning quite closely. The ancient versions read , or (from ), and thus obtained the meaning, which is far less suitable, His sons (object) the lowly smite down. [Ewald, adopting this definition for the verb, and amending to translates: his fists smote down the weak].And his hands (must) give back his wealth: to wit, by the hands of his children, who will have to appease the creditors of their father. [The suffix in might refer back, in the way of individualization, to the plural in (so Noyes); but against this is the fact that also in the following verse the wicked man is the subject of the discourse. Schlott.]. The meaning would be much less simple if (with Carey, Dillmann) [Bernard, Renan, Lee], his hands were understood literally, and after the preceding mention of his death we were carried back here to the period of his life.
Job 20:11. His bones were full of youthful vigor (so correctly the LXX., Targ., Pesh.while the Vulg., Rosenm., Vaih., etc., understand it of secret sins, and comp. Psa 90:8), [Jerome, however, followed, by E. V., Lee, and Barnes, combining the two ideas of sin and youth, while Renan, Good, Wemyss, Carey, render secret sins. Our other authorities, Ew., Dillmann, Schlott., Rodwell, Words., Con., Ber., Elz., with Ges. and Frst agree with the LXX., etc.]and it lies down with him in the dust; or it is laid down, viz., his youthful vigor; for the use of referring back to , comp. Job 14:19; Psa 103:5 b. For dust, meaning the grave, comp. Job 19:25; Job 17:16.
Second Strophe: Job 20:12-16. A description of the perishableness of the ungodly mans prosperity by a comparison with poison, sweet to the taste, but deadly in its results.
Job 20:12-13 are the protasis dependent on Job 20:14 seq., the apodosis.
Job 20:12. Though evil tastes sweet in his mouth ( lit., makes sweet, Ewald, 122, c [Green, 79, 2]); he hides it under his tongue, i.e., he does not swallow it down, in order to enjoy the sweet taste of it so much the longer [the evildoer likened to an epicure, Delitzsch.Renan: Comme un bonbon qu on laisse fondre dans la bouche].
Job 20:13. He is sparing of it ( to indulge, to spare, here with , the preposition commonly used with verbs of covering, protecting, guarding) and does not let it go, and retains it in his palate.The tenacity with which the evil-doer persists in the lustful enjoyment of his wickedness, is set forth by five parallel and essentially synonymous expressions accumulated together.
Job 20:14. (Nevertheless) his food is changed in his bowelsinto what is explained in the second member. The poison of asps is within him. (= , Job 16:13), lit, gall, is used here for poison,because the ancients used interchangeably terms representing the bitter and the poisonous; comp. = a bitter, poisonous plant and the poison of serpents, in Job 20:16; Deu 32:33. The word is naturally chosen here as antithetic to , verse 12. [On see below, Job 20:16.]
Job 20:15. He hath swallowed down riches., possessions, riches, property, without the accompanying notion of forcible acquisition which rather first makes its appearance in . God will cast them forth again out of his bellyi.e., his riches, or that which he has swallowed. The greedy devourer of wealth will be made to vomit it forth, as by pains of colic. The LXX., from motives of decorum, substituted here for ; in Zophars mouth, however, the latter word need not surprise us.
Job 20:16 returns back to the figure of Job 20:14 b in order to describe more minutely the effect of the poison which he had been enjoying. [He sucked in the poison of asps], the tongue of adders slays himthe tongue being regarded as the seat or container of the poison (Psa 140:4 [3]), the original figure being at the same time changed, and the fatal bite taking the place of the deadly draught; comp. Pro 23:32. [, LXX. ; according to some, e.g., Kitto, Pictorial Bible, the boeten of the Arabs, about a foot long, spotted black and white, the bite instantly fatal; according to others, the el-Haje of the Arabs, from three to five feet long, dark green, with oblique bands of brown, resembling the cobra di capello in its power of swelling the neck and rising on its tail in striking its prey. The cannot be determined. See the Dictionaries and Cyclopdias, Asp, Viper, Serpent, etc.]
Third Strophe: Job 20:17-22. [The evil-doer cannot enjoy his prosperityfor he must restore his ill-gotten gains.]
Job 20:17. He may not delight in the sight of ( as in Job 3:9) brooks, streams, rivers of honey and cream.[The negative and the apocopated express the concurrence of the speakers moral judgment and feeling with the affirmation of the fact. They are a mental Amen to the prediction.E.] After in the absol. state there follow in apposition two nouns in the construct state, , which form an assonance, and are co-ordinate. [Dillmann: It is a more poetic artistic expression than the simple . Hupfeld conjectures that may be a gloss. See Gesen. 255, 3 a.] Honey and milk (or here, by way of gradation, cream, comp. Isa 7:15; Isa 7:22) are a familiar figurative expression denoting luxurious prosperity, as in Exo 3:8; Exo 3:17, and often; found also in the ancient classical poets, in their descriptions of the golden age; e.g., Theocritus, Idyll. V. 124 seq.; Ovid, Metam. I. 111 seq.: Flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant; comp. Virgil, Ecl. IV. 30; Horace, Epod. 16, 47.
Job 20:18. Giving back that which he has labored for (, subst. synonymous with ) [the participial clause coming first, and assigning the reason for what follows] he enjoys it notlit. he swallows it not, he will not be happy. According to the property of his exchange ( as in Job 15:31) he rejoices noti.e., in accordance with the fact that he employed sinful, unjust means of exchange, in order to gain temporal possessions and enjoyments, he has no pleasure in the latter, he must lack the joy which he had promised himself in them. So correctly Ewald, Delitzsch, Dillmann, etc.; while Hirzel and others [E. V. Lee, Bernard, Renan, Rodwell], following the Targum, translate as though instead of , the passage read (as his possessions, so his exchange, i.e., his restitution). Gesenius, Schlottmann [Conant, Elzas] render: as his property that is to be exchanged, i.e., to be restored (similarly Hupfeld: sicut opes permutando comparatas), which, however, yields a strained sense [and is also contrary to the relative independence of the separate lines of the verse, which our poet almost always preserves, and is also opposed by the interposing of . Del. Carey explains: to the full amount of its value, taking in the sense of power, or fullnessa doubtful signification when used in connection with property. To be noted is in our Book for or ].
Job 20:19. For he crushed, abandoned the poori.e., maltreated with persistent injustice the unprotected and defenceless. He has taken houses (lit. a house, collective) for his plunder, and builded them noti.e., has not re-builded them, has not reached the point of reconstructing and fitting them up according to his own taste, because he was not allowed to retain permanent possession of them. Against the rendering of the Targ., Vulg., etc., also of Hupfeld [and E. V.]: he has plundered a house which he builded not, it may be urged that in that case it must have read . The causal relation in which the first member is placed to the second by Delitzsch: because he cast down, let the destitute lie helpless, he shall not, in case he has seized a house, build it up [Conant: the houses he has plundered he shall not build up] is indicated with too little clearness by the at the beginning of the verse, and yields a meaning entirely too artificial. [Other constructions, according to the causal rendering of , are (a) That of the E. V.: Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor: because he hath violently taken away a house which he builded not; surely he shall not, etc.; which cannot be justified in rendering differently in Job 20:19 and in Job 20:20. (b) That of Noyes and Rodwell, who introduce the apodosis in 20b. (c) That of Good, Lee, Wemyss, Carey,which assumes the apodosis to be introduced by in Job 20:21 b.E.].
Job 20:20. For ( co-ordinate to that at the beginning of the preceding verse) he knew no rest in his belly: the seat of his gluttony or avarice. here a substantive (differently from Job 16:12, where it is an adjective), synonymous with , Pro 17:1. For the sentiment comp. Isa 59:8. [E. V.: he shall not feel quietness, etc., overlooks the distinction of tenses in the verse: Perfect, Imperf. Whether we translate for or because, there is a relation of antecedent and consequent between a and b. This has been the evil-doers characterinsatiable voracity; this shall be his doomto be stripped of every thing.E.] (Therefore) he shall not escape with his dearest treasure. without an object = to escape, like , Job 23:7; or also = , comp. Amo 2:15. The in is the of accompaniment or of possession, as in Job 19:20. [Not, therefore, instrumental (Schlottmannthe object conceived of as the instrument), nor partitive: of all his delights he shall save nothing (Conant). The rendering of Carey, Elzas, etc.: in his appetite he let (or lets) nothing escape, is inadmissible on account of the passive form of , which signifies not the act, but the object, of desire.E.]
Job 20:21. Nothing escaped his greediness [or gluttony]: lit. there is nought of a remainder [or of that which has escaped] to his foodcomp. Job 18:19. [ from , not (E. V. meat); hence, more literally still than above: there is nothing that has escaped his eating]. Therefore his wealth shall not endure., as in Psa 10:5, means to be solid, powerful, enduring. , wealth, or also prosperity, as in Job 21:16. [E. V.: no man shall look for his goods, which can only mean (with ), no one shall wait for his property as his heir,a meaning both less simple and less suitable than the above.]
Job 20:22. In the fullness of his superfluity it is strait with himi.e., distress overtakes him, meaning external poverty (not internal anguish, etc.), as b shows. The Inf. constr. (written like , Jdg 8:1), from , after the analogy of , verbs; comp. Gesen. 75 [ 74], Rems. 20 and 21 [Green, 166, 2]. with retracted tone for [on account of the following monosyllable. Del.]; comp. Gen 32:8; Ewald, 232 b.Every hand of a wretched one (comp. Job 3:20) comes upon him (comp. Job 15:21)viz.: to inflict retribution on him for the violence suffered at his hands, or in order to demand of him plundered property. [The primary reference is doubtless to the victims of his own rapacity, although we may give it, with Delitzsch, a more general application: the rich uncompassionate man becomes a defenceless prey of the proletaries.] So according to the reading , comp. Job 3:20. If, following the LXX. and the Vulg. (with Eichhorn, De Wette, etc.), we read , we obtain the meaningin itself indeed admissible, but less in harmony with Job 20:19-21 : the whole power of misery comes upon him. [So Rodwell. Bernard, Noyes and Renan take as in Job 33:2, for wound or blow; and translate: every blow of misfortune (Ren.), or every blow of the wretched, i.e., every blow which cometh upon the wretched (Noyes), or every blow, every plague that can render a man miserable (Bernard).]
Fourth Strophe: Job 20:23-28. The end of the wicked according to the divine judgment.
Job 20:23. That it may serve to the filling of his belly, He casts the glow of His wrath upon him.The subject is God, although He is not expressly named; as in Job 16:7. The Jussive , at the head of the verse, is rendered by most as a simple future: it shall come to pass, viz. that which follows. But to express this we should rather expect (as frequently with the prophets), or (as frequently in prose). For this reason the construction of the Jussive as dependent on is to be preferred to any other (so Stickel, Hahn [Ewald], Dillmann. etc.). [It is certainly simpler, and in the spirit and style of Zophar in this discourse to take as an independent verb, forming the first of the series of jussives in this verse, each of which expresses the strong sympathy of his feelings with the result which he predicts. See above on , Job 20:17; and Dillmanns remark below.E.]The Jussives and , however, are to be explained on the ground that the passage is intended to set forth the necessity for Gods punitive agency as established in the divine order of the world [and at the same time to indicate his own agreement therewith. Dillm.]. In regard to the descent of the divine wrath in the form of a rain of fire, comp. above on Job 18:15.As to the phrase: to fill the belly of any one, comp. above Job 20:20; Luk 15:16.And causes to rain upon him with his food.( serving to introduce the object; comp. Job 16:4; Job 16:10). The subject here again is God. The food which He causes to rain upon the wicked, to wit, his just punishment (comp. Job 9:18; Jer 9:14 [15]) is called his food (), viz. that of the wicked, that which he is appointed to feed upon. [Ewald: rain upon him what can satisfy him.Schlottm.: Such a rain of fire, figuratively speaking, is to be the food of the ungodly, instead of the former dainty morsel of wickedness (comp. Job 20:12-13).Wordsworth: He surfeited himself with rapine, and God will make him surfeit with His revenge.Carey: Just as in Psa 11:6, the wicked are said to drink snares, fire and brimstone, so here the glutton shall have them for food.] It is possible also to refer the suffix to God. Much too artificial is the rendering of the Targ., Aben-Ezra, Gerson, Delitzsch: He causeth it to rain upon him into his flesh,although to be sure might in accordance with Zep 1:17 mean flesh. [In Zeph., however, the parallelism: and their blood is poured forth as dust, and heir flesh () as dung, makes the application clear; whereas here he whole context points to the usual literal application.E.], poetic, full-toned form for as in Job 22:2; Job 27:23. [The morally indignant speech which threatens punishment, intentionally seeks after rare solemn words, and dark-some tones. Delitzsch. The partial assonance of may also have had some influence in determining this form, which in this instance at least can scarcely be regarded as plur., on account of the pointed individual application to Job. The rendering of E. V., Good, Lee, Wem., Rod., Elz.: and shall rain it upon him while he is eating, is at variance with the form, and misses the striking force of the figure as given above.E.]
Job 20:24 seq. describe how the divine decree of wrath is historically realized by the introduction of several illustrations, the first being that of a warlike pursuit and wounding [a highly picturesque description. Ewald].If he flee from the iron armor (comp. Job 39:21), a bow of brass (Psa 18:35) pierces him through (comp. Jdg 5:26). [If he escapes one danger, it is only to fall into another, and from the same source]. The two members of the verse, which are put together asyndetically, are related to each other as antecedent and consequent, as in Job 19:4.
Job 20:25. He draws it out (viz. the arrow, in order to save his life, comp. Jdg 3:22). [The Targ. reads : he (the enemy, or God) draws, and it (the sword) comes out of its sheath; against which Delitzsch objects that cannot signify vagina. Carey also translates , it is drawn, i.e. the sword of the pursuing enemy, who plunges it into him, and then draws it out again; but this is much less natural, and mars the terrible vividness of the description given of his unavailing struggle with his doom.E.]Then it comes forth out of the body; or also out of the back, in case , after the analogy of , Job 3:4, should be identified with . But the difficulty of accomplishing such a manipulation of the weapon scarcely permits this assumption (adopted among the moderns by Dillmann), [The evildoer is imagined as hit in the back, the arrow consequently as passing out at the front. Del.], which, moreover, has against it the following member: and the gleaming steel (comes) out of his gall (comp. Job 16:13; and above on Job 20:14 of this ch.). In regard to , lit. lightning, here gleaming steel, metal head (not a stream of blood, as Hahn explains it), comp. Deu 32:41; Nah 3:3; Hab 3:11.Upon him (come) the terrors of death.The plur. (from , Job 9:34; Job 13:21) could indeed be connected as subject with construed ad sensum (Hahn, Delitzsch), [Conant]; but the accents connect rather with the second member of the verse, so that some such verb as come, break upon, must be supplied with . Equally opposed to the accents, and altogether too difficult is the rendering of Rosenmller and Hirzel [Schultens, Carey]: he goes [departs, he is going! Carey] terrors upon him, i.e., while terrors are upon him.
Job 20:26. Further description of the divine decree of punishment, with special reference to the wicked mans possessions.All darkness is hoarded up for his treasures, i.e., every kind of calamity, by divine appointment, awaits the treasures which he has gathered and laid up ( as in Psa 17:14; comp. Deu 33:19). To the agency of the earthly-minded evildoer storing up treasures for himself corresponds the agency of God in opposition storing up the destruction which is destined to overtake them. Comp. , Rom 2:6. [As Delitzsch suggests, there is somewhat of a play upon words in ].A fire which is not blown consumes him, lit. which was not blown (, a relative clause, Gesenius, 143, 1 [ 121, 3], hence a fire of God burning down from heaven (comp. Job 1:16; Job 18:15; Isa 33:11 seq.). is most simply explained (with Ewald, Hupfeld, Dillmann) [Frst, Conant], as an alternate form of the Jussive Kal, instead of the more common , comp. Ewald, 253, a. [Gesenius takes it as Piel for , with lengthened vowel in place of Daghesh-forte; Delitzsch as Poel with Hholem shortened to Kamets-Khatuph; Hirzel, Olsh., Green ( 93, a; 111, 2, e) as Pual for , with the rendering: a fire not blown shall be made to consume them. In the gender of is disregarded, the adoption of the masc. in both the verbs and making the personification of the supernatural fire more vivid. See on Job 1:19.E.]It must devour that which survives (that which has escaped former judgments; as in Job 20:21) in his tent. is Jussive Kal [to be explained like the preceding Jussives, Job 20:17; Job 20:23] from , to graze, to feed upon, the subject here being used in the masc.; comp. for this rare masc. usage of Psa 104:4; Jer 48:45. Olshausens emendation to (Jussive Niph.=it shall be devoured) is unnecessary. [E. V., Bernard, Barnes, Carey, etc., render: It shall fare ill with him that is left, etc., or That which is left, etc., shall perish, or be destroyed (Lee, Wemyss, Elzas, etc.), some deriving the form from , to fare ill, others from in the same sense (Mercier, Carey), others from , either Kal (Frst) or Niph. (Dathe, Lee). The context favors the root .E.]
Job 20:27. The heavens reveal his iniquity ( also properly Jussive like the verbs in Job 20:26; Job 20:28), and the earth riseth up against him ( pausal form for ). Thus the two chief divisions of the creation, which Job had previously (Job 16:18 seq.) summoned as witnesses in behalf of his innocence, must rather testify the opposite, must thrust him out from themselves as one condemned by God, so that there remains for him as his abode only the gloomy Sheol, the third division of the creation besides heaven and earth; comp. Job 11:8-9; Psa 135:6; Sir 24:7-9.
Job 20:28. The increase of his house must depart, flowing forth (lit. things that flow, or run away, diffluentia, in apposition to ) in the day of His wrath, viz. the divine wrath. Ges., Olsh. [Gr., 140, 2], etc., explain as Part. Niph. from with an Aram. formation, defining it to mean opes corras, things which have been scraped or gathered together; but less satisfactorily, for the clause , at the end of this member of the verse, hardly permits us to look for a second subject, synonymous with . Moreover we must have found that thought expressed rather by = opes ab eo corrasae. As it would seem that after Job 20:27 a return to the wicked mans possessions and treasures could not properly be looked for, some commentators have indulged in attempted emendations of the passage, all of which touch upon in the first member (Jussive Kal from , to depart, to wander forth, comp. Pro 27:25). Thus Dathe, Stickel, etc., read the flood rolls away his house, etc.: Ewald, the revenue of his house must roll itself away (like a torrent; comp. Amo 5:27): Dillmann finally , Jussive Niphal of the produce of his house must become apparent as that which flows away in the day of His wrath.
Job 20:29. Closing verse, lying outside of the strophic arrangement, like Job 5:27, etc.This is the portion of the wicked man from Elohim; the lot or portion (, comp. Job 27:13; Job 31:2) assigned to him by Elohim, [ , a rare application of , comp. Pro 6:12 instead of which is more usual, Del.].And the heritage appointed to him by God. , lit. his heritage of the word, i.e., his heritage as appointed to him by a word, by a command, a judicial sentence ( in this sense only here; but used similarly nevertheless in Psa 77:9; Heb 3:9. It is possible moreover to take the suffix in as genitive of the object to [or ], in which case the sense would be: the heritage of the command concerning him. In this case however the construction would be a much harsher one. [ and taken in connection with the of the preceding verse form a striking oxymoron: that his heritage be taken away from him, that is the heritage adjudged to him by God. Schlottmann].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
This second discourse of Zophars, which is at the same time the last of the utterances directed by him against Jobfor in the third act of the colloquy he does not speakas respects the passionate obstinacy with which it urges the one ever repeated dogma and fundamental axiom of the friends is related to the second discourse of Eliphaz in chapter 15, as superlative to positive, and to the second discourse of Bildad, as superlative to comparative. In it the narrow-minded, legal, as well as unfriendly and unjust opposition of the friends to the misunderstood sufferer appears at its height, as was the case with the former discourse of Zophar in its relation to its two predecessors.Neither does it present any new thoughts in opposition to Job, any more than the immediately preceding discourses of Eliphaz and Bildad. The terrible picture of the judgment of wrath upon the sinner, with the delineation of which, true to the pattern presented by those two discourses, it is principally, and indeed almost exclusively occupied, exhibits scarcely anything that is materially new or original. Only as regards its formal execution does this picture of horror surpass its two predecessors. It excels in its adroit presentation, and in its skilful, and to some extent original treatment of the familiar figures and phraseology of the Chokmah. This descriptive power, which in the effects produced by it proves itself to be not inconsiderable, seems indeed to be wholly subservient to the speakers spirit and purpose, which are characterized by hateful suspicion and vehement accusation. This materially weakens the impression which it is calculated to produce. It is not possible to illustrate the principle that the covetous, unmerciful rich man is torn away from his prosperity by the punishment God decrees for him, more fearfully and more graphically than Zophar does it; and this terrible description is not overdrawn, but true and appropriatebut in opposition to Job it is the extreme of uncharitable-ness which outdoes itself: applied to him the fearful truth becomes a fearful lie. For in Zophars mind Job is the godless man, whose rejoicing does not last long, who indeed raises himself towards heaven, but as his own dung, (comp. on Job 20:7) must he perish, and to whom the sin of his unjust gain is become as the poison of the viper in his belly. The arrow of Gods wrath sticks fast in him; and though he draw it out, it has already inflicted on him a deservedly mortal wound! The fire of God which has already begun to consume his possessions, does not rest until even the last remnant in his tent is consumed. The heavens, when in his self-delusion he seeks the defender of his innocence, reveal his guilt, and the earth which he hopes to have as a witness in his favor, rises up as his accuser. Thus mercilessly does Zophar seek to stifle the new trust which Job conceives towards God, and to extinguish the faith which bursts upward from beneath the ashes of the conflict. His method is soul-destroying; he seeks to slay the life which germinates from the feeling of death, instead of strengthening it. (Delitzsch). Comp. what Brentius says in his straightforward striking way: Zophar to the end of the chapter puts forth the most correct opinions; but he is at fault in that he falsely distorts them against Job, just as though Job were afflicted for impiety, and asserted his innocence out of hypocrisy, and not out of the faith of the Gospel.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
As regards the homiletic treatment of this discourse, the same may be said in general as of the discourses, related as to their contents, in chapters 15 and 18. The description given of the perishableness of the prosperity of the ungodly, and of their just punishment at the last through the judgment of God, has its objective truth and value for the practical life; but the vehement tone of the representation, and the many unmistakable allusions to Job as the object of the speakers unfriendly suspicion, destroy the pure enjoyment of the discourse, and compel us to regard the picture, skilful as it is in itself, with critical caution.
Particular Passages
Job 20:8. Brentius: The state of the ungodly is compared to the most unsubstantial things, to wit, to a dream, and to visions of the night, which, while they are seen, seem to be something, but when the dreamer awakens, there is nothing remaining, as is set forth in Isaiah 29.
Job 20:10. Idem: From this verse we learn whence the poverty, and whence the wealth of children proceeds, viz., from the piety of parents (Psa 37:25).Weimar Bible: The reason why many children suffer great misfortune, and especially poverty, lies often in their own sin, but it also proceeds oftentimes from the wickedness of their parents (Exo 20:5). He therefore who would see his children prosperous, let him beware of sin.
Job 20:12 seq. Starke: Sinful pleasure is commonly transformed into pain. When sin is first tasted it is sweet like sugar, but afterwards it bites like an adder (Pro 20:17; Pro 23:32; Sir 21:2 seq.).
Job 20:20 seq. Brentius: As water can never satisfy the dropsical, but the more it is drank, the more it is thirsted for; so riches never satisfy the minds lust, for the human mind can be satisfied with no good, save God (Ecc 1:8). Hence it comes to pass by Gods righteous decree, that as the avaricious man is discontented with what he has, as well as what he has not, so the ungodly man never has enough, however much property he may possess, because he is without God, in whom all good things are stored. You have an example of this in Alexander the Great, who, not content with the sovereignty of one world, groaned on learning that there were more worlds.
Job 20:27. Idem: Creatures, when they see the impieties and crimes of the ungodly, are silent until God pronounces judgment; but when His judgment is revealed, then all creatures betray the crimes which the ungodly have committed in their presence. In Christ however the sins of all the godly are covered, nay, are absorbed.Wohlfarth: Nature is leagued against sin! It is an incontrovertible truth which we find here, written thousands of years agohe who departs from Gods ways contends against heaven and earth, which from the beginning of the ages have been arrayed against sin, as a revolt against Gods sacred ordinances.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Job having in the foregoing Chapter closed his answer to Bildad; he is appealed to in this, by a new address of Zophar. But the whole of what he advanceth is to the same amount as the former, and runs all upon the same mistaken idea, that misery and suffering can only mark the character of bad men.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
(1) Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, (2) Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste. (3) I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my understanding causeth me to answer.
The Reader should observe in the very opening of Zophar’s sermon, that notwithstanding all his violence in support of what he calls good men, and the punishment of the wicked, he gives no testimony of goodness in his own heart, for he shows not the least compassion to Jobadiah Surely had he felt as a good man, he never could have added misery to a heart that was afflicted like Job’s, nor when the poor man cried out, Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O my friends, as he had just done, have instantly insulted him as he doth in this chapter. Reader! depend upon it there is no true source for morality, and the common charities of life, but in the grace of GOD in JESUS CHRIST; and the only dependence for the exercise of the love of man, must be found in the love of GOD.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job 20:12-13
Zophar, the Naamathite, mentioneth a sort of men in whose mouths wickedness is sweet. ‘They hide it under their tongues, they spare it, and forsake it not, but keep it still in their mouths.’ This furnisheth me with a tripartite division of men in the world.
The first and best are those who spit sin out, loathing it in their judgments, and leaving it in their practice.
The second sort, notoriously wicked, who swallow sin down, actually and openly committing it.
The third, endeavouring an expedient between heaven and hell, neither do not deny their lusts, neither spitting them out, nor swallowing them down, but rolling them under their tongues, epicurizing thereon in their filthy fancies and obscene speculations.
Thomas Fuller.
Job 20:19
What right have we to complain of the indifference of the universe, what right have we to declare it unintelligible and monstrous? Why this surprise at an injustice in which we ourselves have taken so active a part?… Poverty, for example, which we continue to rank among the irremediable ills, such as shipwrecks and plagues; poverty, with all its crushing sorrows and transmitted degeneration how often may this be ascribed to the injustice of the elements, and how often to the injustice of our social condition, which is man’s crowning injustice? When we see undeserved misery, need we look to the skies for the reason of it, as if a flash of lightning had caused it?
Maeterlinck in The Buried Temple.
The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. Oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor’s accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire.
Thackeray, Vanity Fair, chap. LVII.
Job 20:27
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. Some damning circumstance always transpires.
Emerson.
Reference. XXI. 2. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2183.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
An Ancient Conception of Wickedness. I.
Job 20
Zophar was in a great tumult of mind when he made this closing speech. He was determined to end with commination, and sound of storm and ruin. Probably there is no such chapter in all the sacred canon. Zophar did not know where to begin, nor could he connect his senses well together for a little time; he made haste, without progress; he went forward, and came back again: but once fairly started he never lost his feet; he grew in power of denunciation; the spark at last burned like an oven. It is interesting to go back thousands of years, and to ascertain what was thought of wicked men at that early period in the world’s history. Have we improved in our conception of wickedness? According to some authorities, the Book of Job was written by Moses. There is a general consensus of opinion that it is a production of the patriarchal age. It was undoubtedly written before the giving of the law, as it came by Moses; for there is not in the whole poem a single reference to Mosaic legislation. It is helpful to bear this in mind, because it assists us to fix the time of the authorship, and if that time was very remote how interesting is the question, What was thought of wickedness then? Was it treated as youthful, as a mere exhibition of inexperience, an unexpected variation of human conduct? or were the early ages well instructed in morals, having large and clear view of conduct, motive, and issue of life? Awful is the thought that wickedness, disobedience call it by what name we may was at the first treated like an old enormity. The law of penalty did not grow from little to more, from more to much; the law of penalty began where the law of penalty will end; it began in death, and in death it terminates. All penalty is of the nature of death. Whoever receives one stroke upon his body for wrong done dies, not in the obvious and literal sense of giving up the ghost and being buried in a grave; that is a narrow and unworthy conception of death; that is how dogs die. Every child set in the corner in chastisement dies. Would God we could recover that idea! It might make us sometimes thoughtful, solemn, and take out of all punishment the idea of frivolity. Said the Lord God, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Men have thought that the utterance meant in effect, thou shalt drop down dead; thou shalt be a dead body, and none shall live to dig thy grave; thou shalt rot in the hot sands, and be a pestilence in the air. Nothing of the kind. When you uttered one forbidden word you died. We are all dead men. If we live it is by the miracle of grace. “You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.” We lose much by too scrupulous a literalness. We say, Adam did not fall down dead; he lived; he was turned out of Paradise, and he became the father of the human race; he did not die. So talking we are frivolous, superficial, utterly uninstructed in spiritual thought and purpose. Man dies when he does wrong; hidden life is death. The point of interest, however, in this particular chapter relates to the judgment which was formed of wickedness in ages long gone. Zophar states the case with extreme vivacity of language, with striking picturesqueness of illustration. Let us follow this frank speaker in all his graphic talk.
“Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?” ( Job 20:4-5 ).
We speak of Zophar as being old, and Zophar himself went back upon the thousands of years that had expired before his time; so that from the very first wickedness had a bad reputation, and was doomed to early judgment. Observe the words. The wicked has triumphing, and the hypocrite has joy: these things are allowed. There is great triumphing in wickedness. Men may become proud of it; they may laugh themselves into delight when they view the abundance of success which they have achieved in villainy. Manasseh was the worst king of Judah, yet he lived the longest: might not he have lifted up his head and said: They call wickedness death; I have outlived all the kings of Judah who have tried to do a little better than their predecessors? The worst pope lived longest and died richest: might not he have said: There have been simpletons on the throne, princes of Rome, that tried to pray; I never tried; I muttered the sacred words, but I took care to let them all fall into the dust and not to rise to heaven, and I shall leave more property than the princes of the Tiara that went before me? There is a triumphing in wickedness. It is possible for a man to be so strong that he can crush all weaker men, to put them out of his way by oppressive and overwhelming strength. All this is admitted in the Scriptures. And there is joy in wrong-doing. There is a stolen laughter; there is a fatness of prosperity which is all put on from the outside. Hypocrisy can live in the biggest house in the terrace. Wickedness can have hundreds of acres of park-land more than righteousness. Let it be clearly understood that all this is taken into account. But what was said about it of old, since man was placed upon the earth? When the wicked were triumphing an invisible hand wrote the word “short” upon all the mad hilarity: this is but a bubble, a flash of fire; presently it will go out, and nothing will be left but the smoke and an intolerable odour. The hypocrite had joy. He laughed behind his vizor; he chuckled when men thought him good; he made merry with them in his heart; but an invisible hand wrote upon that white vizor, “for a moment.” There is the drawback to wickedness. A man shall take to the practice of any form of vice, and for the first mile he shall gallop. But watch him. Why does he not gallop the second mile? Perhaps he does, at least for a furlong or two; he may even go into the third mile, and still his well-spurred steed may be flying through the air. He gallops well, but, see, he leaps! “Where is he?” And the answer is, “Where is he?” There is no road down there; at the end of that little path there is a smoking, reeking pit. Such was the repute, then, in which wickedness was held of old, since man was placed upon the earth.
Then again Zophar says:
“Though his excellency mount: up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?” (Job 20:6 , Job 20:7 .)
Observe the two parts of the statement. His excellency mounts up to the heavens. There is no mistake about this, men may say, as they look upon wickedness achieving its aim and wearing its coveted laurels. There are men who have been wicked who fill as large a space in history as has been filled by men who have been virtuous. Some tyrants have a longer biography than Christ had. So we are not to judge anything before the time. If we look when his excellency mounts up to the heavens, and his head reaches unto the clouds, we shall form a wrong judgment altogether: the day must be taken in its completeness, and not in any particular hour of the circle through which it runs. The second part of the statement has in it the word “perish.” That is the doom of wickedness. Why do we try the experiment for ourselves when age after age it has been tried and age after age has confirmed the doom? What reason have we to suppose that we are abler men than those who have gathered together all the resources of wickedness, and used them all the day round? What resources have we that Solomon had not? But we need not go to history for a confirmation of the doom; that confirmation is within our own hearts. No man ever had any real joy in ill-gotten money. His money and he never were friends. They were mutually-suspecting partners. The money said, You have no right to me, you villain! and the owner said, Not for worlds would I let it be known how I got you into my possession! They have lived a kind of made-up life together. The bad man’s unclean hands have chinked the gold, but could get no music out of it: it was the sweat of poverty, it was the groan of weakness, it was the price of blood. We have never done wrong but we ourselves have known the meaning of the word “perish.” The lamp of life has gone out; as for the little lamp of self-approval, it has been crushed out by some sudden and tremendous force, so that it could never be lighted again. We have never done a mean deed without being ashamed to meet an honest neighbour. What fantastic tricks we have played in our meanness! We have taken offence at others because we have done wrong ourselves; we have become thin-skinned because our conscience has given way, and has followed us like an avenging creditor demanding the uttermost farthing. Then the fool’s laugh has curled our lip; then the untrue gladness has tried to gleam in our eyes: but within, what a tumultunderstanding slain, conscience angry, love dead! Wickedness is not worth the doing, were it merely a question of equivalent and result. It tastes well in the mouth; it poisons the vitals.
In the ninth verse Zophar uses a word which, put into English, is very familiar to us. The; word is “no more” “the eye also which saw him shall see him no more,” nor want to see him. That is the worst of it. Who mourns over the loss of that which is not desired? Why mourn we our dead with long lamentation and with rivers of tears? Because we would see them again. No man wants the wicked-doer to come any more. There are some loved ones whom we would like to spend a day with. Could they but lean over heaven’s gate and talk down to us from amid the glory, we should be glad to see them. There are those who have gone whom we should seek out had we to creep around the circumference of the earth to enjoy the opportunity. But no man wants the bad thinker and evil actor back again. Let him rot in his grave! There are graves on which even children would not plant a flower; graves that never dry; graves that are soaked, and which the sun will never bless; and the only epitaph that should be written upon the cold stones is “no more.” What a poor life is that which ends in such an issue! The better life is before us the sweet possibility of so living that men will never allow our names to die; when men think of our names they will straighten themselves up to some new effort in virtue; when our conduct is recalled it will come upon the reviving memory like an inspiration, and we shall be blessed for thoughts of mercy and for deeds of charity. But suppose the wickedness should never be discovered? That is impossible. Discovery is a large word. It is not to be judged by the letter. Discovery comes in providences that hunt a man to death in a thousand ways. God’s providences guard all the golden gates, stand upon all the hilltops, watch with jealousy the frontier-land, so that there shall be no crossing; and men may ask, Why this bewilderment, perplexity; why this continual backdriving, why this impossibility of progress? Other men pass on, and we cannot advance; and when that question is asked seriously, clear away down in the deep sanctuary of the heart, an angel will answer, This is the black harvest of a black seedtime. Blessed be God for this punishment. We are kept right by penal statutes. Were there no punishment, how soon would the world commit self-slaughter, perish, and disappear; and the bright stars all round the belt of heaven would say, Where is the little earth? The answer might be: The law of punishment was suspended, nay, abolished; men were allowed to do what they pleased, without any results of a penal kind, and they have one and all leaped into destruction. How much do we owe to that which we fear! Whilst it may be wrong to preach so as to excite only the fears of men, there is no real preaching, no complete preaching, that omits any appeal that can call men to thoughtfulness or sober them into gravity for a moment. Such preaching will never be popular. Who likes to hear of punishment, of death, or hell? Nothing is easier in the world than to be popular, to excite whole towns, by telling lies, or tricking out the truth with a vain show. And were life’s history but so many sunny days, this would be easy and pleasant; but there is an after-time. “So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.” That is right. God must be severe with watchmen. The law of trusteeship must be the severest in all the statutes of the land. Were the preacher to call you by endearing names, and assure you of an immediate heaven, do what you please, how pleasant the intercourse! How joyous every occasion of meeting! That might be so for a day or two, but “the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.” And the hypocritical preacher will have the hottest of all hells! He never told the people the reality of the case; he had his philosophies, and his theories, and his new conceptions; he yesterday hit upon a novel hypothesis by which to set the universe at a new angle, so that men saw it as they never saw it before: but who made him a hypothesis-monger? Who asked him to awake his invention, when he ought to have declared a revelation? O Wickedness, thou hast a bad character! thy reputation is ancient enough, but from the first God’s wolves have been out upon thee, and they will tear thee to pieces. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Do not be misled by fine-drawn distinctions between infirmity and wickedness. Whatever distinctions are to be drawn, let God draw them. As for us, let us be severe upon ourselves. When a man tries to look at his actions so as to make them as white as possible, he is doing wrong. Self-forgiveness should be impossible. We speak a great mystery, but it touches the soul of things. When the law pronounces a man legally innocent, let him retire into his conscience, and it his conscience say, You have escaped because the letter of the law could not touch you, but only on that ground, let him never go out into society again; let him live in the hell of his own remorse. That is the true purgatorial fire. It does not prevent the heaven of God’s forgiveness beyond, but it is God who alone can forgive sin no man can forgive himself. The lie you told a quarter of a century ago shall add bitterness to your feast this day. You need not speak about it, or make yourself a hero in suffering because of it, or say, Behold how sensitive is my moral nature, and how responsive to every appeal is my conscience: you can have intercourse with yourself within, and that intercourse will often make you hold down your head, whilst other men are holding up theirs and enjoying the feast. Walk softly all your days. Do not imagine that this will interfere with the divine forgiveness; and do not imagine that it will destroy another feeling, sacred and enrapturing, which will come out of the consciousness of the divine forgiveness. Life is a great mystery. It is not made up of simplicities which a child can handle, and enumerate, and set in regular order, as so many, and no more. Life is conflict; life is self-contradiction; life is torment with joy, and joy with torment. There is a moral memory, a conscience which is an inspired recollection, and which says, Remember the hole of the pit out of which you were digged. When men forget the past they misinterpret and misapply the present.
Zophar, then, was very frank and distinct about the wicked, and he went so far as to say that the children of the bad man shall come into an evil inheritance We cannot prevent this. Here is the fact, if the Bible were burned. Men talk about not being responsible for what another man did long, long ago. Such reasoning is false, because untrue to fact, as known amongst ourselves, outside the Church. Why that eruption in that man’s body? Did he make it? No. Who made it? It has come down through ten generations, that same stigma, that same cruel signature. Why are these people so sensitive, nervous, fidgetty, wanting in self-control? what is the matter with them? Their father lived a life that expresses itself so in his innocent little children. They cannot bear this, and they cannot endure something else, and they are afraid and weak, fragile, wanting in robustness of nerve and thought, and all kinds of force. Why? Yet their father says he has pursued a certain course for forty years, and never felt the worse for it. What a fool’s boast! Would he but look at his children he would see that he has made them suffer for it. This is not in the Bible, this is not a theological doctrine made by the priests and foisted upon society by the tricksters of the pulpit; this is reality. With such realities before us, it is impossible to deny that we may today be suffering because long ages since a man broke loose from God’s altar and forgot to pay God’s tribute. We are not dissociated individuals, each having his own individuality, his own eternity, his own self-contained and complete personality. Humanity is one. The solidarity of the human race is now affirmed by the highest teachers of science. Let us thank God that humanity is one: for then one Saviour may handle the delicate and difficult situation; and if death came by one, so life may come by one, if by one man’s disobedience great evil was wrought, by one man’s obedience great triumphs may be achieved. The evangelical conception is to our thinking day by day clearer, in all its reach and meaning, and it is easier to sneer at it than to disprove it.
Zophar indicates another thought which is full of pleasing reflection. He pictures, in the tenth verse, the children of the bad man seeking to please the poor, and trying in some way to restore their goods. Let us make this the meaning, if we can do so without straining the letter. It has, at all events, a meaning which does occasionally exemplify itself in that manner The difficulty is this, that sometimes we do by way of grace and goodness what we ought to do by way of right and justice. We say to men, Be pleased to take this; it gives us pleasure to convey it; we wish to be courteous and hospitable and kind; be good enough to receive this token of our good-will. By so doing we are practising tricks of vanity and self-display. We should rather say, My father robbed your family fifty years ago: take this as part-payment. Would God we could pay you to the uttermost farthing; but it is yours, not ours, and I will go away and try to make some more, and I will bring it to you; yea, if God spare my health, I will try to pay you fourfold. It was a bad deed; the man, the literal robber, is not here himself, but I cannot rest with the stigma upon my name: take it, not as a favour, but as a right, and put down on paper that I have paid you so much in the pound.
Note
The age in which Job lived is a question that has created much discussion. The most probable opinion fixes it as earlier than Abraham. The book may be read, therefore, between the eleventh and twelfth chapters of Genesis, as a supplement to the concise record of the early condition of our race, given by Moses.
The arguments adduced in support of the latter opinion are as follows. (1) The long life of Job, extending to two hundred years. (2) The absence of any allusion to the Mosaic law, or the wonderful works of God towards Israel in their departure from the land of bondage, and their journey to Canaan; which are constantly referred to by the other sacred writers, as illustrating the character and government of Jehovah. (3) The absence of any reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; which memorable event occurred in the vicinity of the country where Job resided; and which as a signal and direct judgment of the Almighty upon the wicked, would hardly have been omitted in an argument of this nature. (4) The worship of the sun and moon being the only form of idolatry mentioned; which was, without question, the most ancient, chap. Job 31:26-28 . (5) The manners and customs described, which are those of the earliest patriarchs. (6) The religion of Job is of the same kind as that which prevailed among the patriarchs before the Mosaic: economy. It is the religion of sacrifices: but without any officiating priest, or sacred place. (7) To these arguments Dr. Hales has added one derived from astronomy, founded on chaps, Job 9:9 , and Job 38:31 , Job 38:22 . He states, that the principal stars there referred to, appear, by a retrograde calculation, to have been the cardinal constellations of spring and autumn about b.c. 2130, or about one hundred and eighty-four years before the birth of Abraham.
It is worthy of notice, that if Job lived between the deluge and the call of Abraham, we have an additional proof that God has never left the world without witnesses to his truth. Angus’s Bible Handbook.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
An Ancient Conception of Wickedness. II.
Job 20
Zophar has drawn a dreary picture of the wicked man and the issue of all wicked action. His language has been incisive, picturesque, unmistakable as to emphasis and meaning. He thus speaks of the wicked man:
“His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue; though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth: yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him” ( Job 20:11-14 ).
According to Zophar, the wicked man is not permitted to keep that which he has attained; he falls back from every point of supposed progress; he yields every assumed victory. “He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again” ( Job 20:15 ). He shall not be for ever rich. He may have the handling of much gold, but he will be a beggar at the last. He shall suck the poison of asps which lies in the hedge. He shall suppose himself to be enjoying a luxury, but he shall awake too late, to find that he has been feeding upon the poison of asps.
Zophar leaves the wicked man no point of redemption, no rag of reputation, no standing-ground in the assembly of the ages. He kindles a hell around the evil-doer, and burns him, so that there is nothing left of him but hot ashes. The judgment is complete, all-including, terrible in all its aspects and issues.
But all this might be taken as so much denunciation in words, were not some substantial moral reason assigned for all this visitation. Here is the strength of the Bible. We may stand and gaze upon its Niagara-like denunciations, we may wonder at the torrent of “woes proceeding from the gracious lips of the Son of God, and we may say, All this is eloquent expression: but is it anything more? Now, wherever there is denunciation there is explanation, and in all cases the woe never exceeds the moral reason; there is no excess of utterance; the reason is deep enough to hold all the torrent. We have that reason even in the speech of Zophar. He, not supposed by all commentators to be logical and coherent, strengthens his speech by a “because.” If we can find in that “because” room enough for the judgment, we may turn again to the judgment and read its words with new significance and new appreciation:
“Because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor; because he hath violently taken away an house which he builded not” ( Job 20:19 ).
That is the reason! It is sufficient! This is a moral universe, governed by moral considerations, judged by moral standards. This is not a mere creation, in the sense of a gigantic framework well put together, excellently lighted, and affording abundant accommodation for anybody who may choose to come into it; this is a school, a sanctuary, a place of judgment, a sphere in which issues are determined by good conduct. Let us dwell upon this point until we feel much of its meaning.
What is it that excites all this divine antagonism and judgment? Was the object of it a theological heretic? Was the man pronounced wicked because he had imbibed certain wrong notions? Was this a case of heterodoxy of creed being punished by the outpouring of the vials of divine wrath? Look at the words again “because he hath oppressed and hath forsaken the poor.” His philanthropy was wrong. The man was wicked socially wicked in relation to his fellow men. All wickedness is not of a theological nature and quality, rising upward into the region of metaphysical conceptions and definitions of the Godhead, which only the learned can present or comprehend; there is a lateral wickedness, a wickedness as between man and man, rich and poor, poor and rich, young and old; a household wickedness, a marketplace iniquity. There we stand on solid rock. If you have been led away with the thought that wickedness is a theological conception, and a species of theological nightmare, you have only to read the Bible, in its complete sense, in order to see that judgment is pronounced upon what may be called lateral wickedness the wickedness that operates amongst ourselves, that wrongs mankind, that keeps a false weight and a short measure, that practises cunning and deceit upon the simple and the ignorant, that fleeces the unsuspecting, a social wickedness that stands out that it may be seen in all its black hideous-ness, and valued as one of the instruments of the devil. There is no escape from the judgment of the Bible. If it pronounce judgment upon false opinions only, then men might profess to be astounded by terms they cannot comprehend, by metaphysics that lie beyond their culture: but the Bible goes into the family, the marketplace, the countinghouse, the field where the labourer toils, and insists upon judging the actions of men, and upon sending away the richest man from all his bank of gold, if he have oppressed and forsaken the poor. Compare this with Christ’s judgment of opinions: “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.” And he shall say unto them on the right hand, You have had excellent opinions, you have been good judges of philosophy, you have been sharp-minded, keen-eyed; you have been very brilliant metaphysicians: therefore go into the golden heavens, and enjoy the New Jerusalem, and be at rest for evermore. How poorly the judgment would have read! And to them on the left hand the Judge shall say, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for you have been as owls in the sanctuary, seeing nothing of the mystery of daylight, you have been without cleverness, ability, mental astuteness; you know nothing about long words and difficult terms: therefore go down, and sink into eternal night. How unjust the judgment! We have not had equal chances in this matter. But the judgment shall run contrariwise, on a great broad human and social level “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat.” Any man can divide his crust with another, if not divide it in equal halves, divide it so that the other man, aching with hunger, shall at least appease his desire. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.” Any one can hand a cup of cold water. The merit is not in the water, but in the cup and in the handling. The well is deep, and thou hast nothing to draw with, but I have a vessel with which I can draw; and if I see thee die of thirst, because I will not lend thee the vessel or show thee how to draw the water, I care not if I am as metaphysical as Athanasius and as learned as Augustine, there is no hell too hot and deep for me. This is the commandment of God: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Where can we find in all the range of Holy Scripture a single instance in which a man was, so to say, promoted to heaven because he had clear views, because all his opinions were exquisitely right and were laid out in faultless intellectual mosaic? The Pharisees were men of learning: did the Lord ever pronounce a single eulogium upon them? The scribes lived in letters, all day they were writing words, explaining terms, reading the law; they were in very deed the literary men of their day: when did Christ gather them together in a common feast and say, Now shut the door, and let the ignorant be excluded, whilst we, wise men and learned, instruct one another in terms of brotherhood and love? To whom did Jesus Christ ever say, Whatever they say unto you, do it; because they sit in Moses’ seat and their word is right enough: but do not follow their example? These were the learned men of the time! On the other hand, how often is conduct made the rule of judgment? There can be no difficulty in pointing out instances illustrative of this: the poor woman who followed the Saviour into the house of Simon, stood behind him, and cried over him, and washed his feet with her tears, and dried them with the hairs of her head; she was forgiven all her sins: the poor widow who passed the treasury and dropped in all her living. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” That verse should be read backwards sometimes, so that the littleness of the deed may be seen in the littleness of the receiver: inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these we fix our minds always upon the person receiving the benefaction: whereas we ought to say If done to the least, it was the least that could be done, yet upon this minimum of excellence God sets the seal of heaven. We have stated this thus broadly and fervently, but if it went without modification it would present a totally incomplete and mischievous view of the case. Do let us beware of all half-truths. It is distressing to see how men will eagerly snatch at half a truth when it pleases them, and forget the other half that would modify it, and hold it in just proportion, and chasten the receiver, and keep him within the grip and discipline of God. A man’s conduct is not necessarily good because he has no opinions. A person is not necessarily of the very highest quality of character because he professes to know nothing about God, and the spiritual world, and the mysterious laws that are said to govern human motive and human destiny. It might be supposed from some eloquent speakers that if a man only endeavoured to be charitable, if he cared nothing for what people thought, if he opened his door to all sorts of men and never asked them a question about the law or the gospel, he would be an excellent person, and would be sure of heaven. Let us protest against this sophism; yea, let us call it more than a sophism: it is the deceit which men like; it is easy piety; it gratifies many a sensibility without bringing the whole soul under discipline, and under a sense of indebtedness to him from whom alone is every good gift and every perfect gift. Let us reason rather in some such way as this: here is a man who is endeavouring to do good; therefore God is working in him, though the man himself know it not; having begun by being charitable, he may end by being also truly spiritual: in the meantime, the charity is excellent, it is to be encouraged, a divine blessing goes along with it, without it there could be no piety; but in itself it is incomplete, yet, who knows? Persevere in doing the will, and at last you may know the doctrine: multiply your good deeds. Do not discourage yourself in sacrifice, in gift of every kind, in service of every range and quality, but proceed, and be abundant in good labours, because you are doing more than you think you are doing: you are undergoing a process of education, and some day there may strike you a new light, an illumination above the brightness of the sun, and you may then see the explanation which had never entered into your conception before. Let us resist the foolish suggestion that it is sufficient to be easy, genial, unsuspecting, even liberal in donation; all that is right, good, invaluable: but unless the fountain be pure the stream cannot continue to be good; here and there it may be limpid enough, very attractive and most useful, but a clean thing cannot come out of an unclean; the stream is only right when the fountain is right; not until the heart is right with God can the hands both of them, and all day be right with society.
Zophar gives a view of the wicked which is very significant:
“In the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits” ( Job 20:22 ).
That is a marvellous instance of divine judgment. A man may have much, and yet be in poverty. We have heard of some such instances in actual life Men are said to have quite an abundance of property, and yet they cannot meet an immediate obligation: their property is consolidated; it is not immediately available, so that comparatively rich men have sometimes to ask favours of their friends. All this may be good in commerce, perfectly intelligible in business relations; it involves no dishonour whatever: but take it as a suggestion of something far beyond itself. Here is a man who has “fulness of sufficiency,” and yet he is in straits. He has plenty of the wrong stuff. A man at a toll-gate who has a million-pound note is as badly off as the man who has not a single halfpenny: neither of the men can pass through the toll-gate. There may be a poverty of wealth as well as a poverty of destitution. So the wicked man may be in straits of all kinds; he may have plenty of money, and not know how to spend it; he may have an abundance of property, and be without thoughts, impulses of a heavenly kind, aspirations that seek the skies. The bad man may have no explanation of the miseries which torment him; he may be mad with impatience because his spirit has never been chastened by heavenly experience. The good man may have nothing, and yet may abound; he may be hungry, and yet may be satisfied: his affliction is a sanctified sorrow; he says, This is for the present, and “no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby;” and the Lord may come tomorrow, or on the third day he may be here: one look, and I shall forget my lifelong trouble; one vision of Christ, and all earth’s tragedy will be sunk in oblivion. The good man, whose whole estate is in God, can never be in straits; he meets a mystery, and hails it, turns it into an altar, and under its darkening shadow prays his mightiest prayers The good man entertains as a guest black affliction, weird grief, awful sorrow, and says to the guest, You are not welcome for your own sake, but a blessing shall come even out of you: God sent you: you may eat my flesh and my bones, and drink my blood, and seem to conquer, but inasmuch as I believe God, and in God, and live in God, you cannot hurt me; I have a word singing in me now, and this is what it says “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do:” stop as long as God wants you to stop: your victory will be your failure; when you have conquered in your little purpose, you will have but cut the tether, and given me all the room of heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” “Moses… refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter… esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.” Liberty is in the mind; freedom is in Christian hope: he who is in Christ, and seizes the future in Christ’s spirit and in Christ’s name, is not poor, cannot be poor; he is rich with unsearchable riches.
So Zophar has described the estate and condition of the wicked. Who will be wicked now? Who will dare this fate? We know it to be true; we need no logician or rhetorician to prove this truth and drive it home upon us: we know it to be true. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;” “Our God is a consuming fire;” “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” “The wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment.” We cannot tell the meaning of these terms; we have never pretended to define them; if they could be defined they would be weakened: let them stand there, in all their dumb significance, too vast for language, too awful for metaphor. If this be the fate of the wicked, it follows that the fate of the righteous must be otherwise. “Le me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” I would rather die with Christ by my side in the poorest hovel in creation, than die without him in a king’s palace, with regiments of soldiers gathered in serried ranks around the royal walls. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them: “they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;” they shall serve God day and night in his temple, and his name shall be in their foreheads, and a white stone of mystery in their palm. May this be our sweet fate! That it may be so we must adopt the divine means for securing the gracious end: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out” “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.” Seeing that we have to face: the future, that every man has to read the dark book for himself, who says that he will refuse the light of Christ’s presence, the joy of Christ’s comfort?
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
(See the Job Book Comments for Introductory content and general conclusions and observations).
VI
THE SECOND ROUND OF SPEECHES
Job 15-21.
In this chapter we take up the second round of speeches, commencing with the second speech of Eliphaz. This speech consists of two parts, a rejoinder to Job’s last speech and a continuation of the argument.
The main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 ) are as follows:
1. A reflection on Job’s wisdom (Job 15:1-3 ). A wise man would not answer with vain knowledge, windy words, nor reason with unprofitable words.
2. An accusation of impiety (Job 15:4-6 ). Job is irreverent, binders devotion, uses a serpent tongue of craftiness whose words are self-condemnatory. (Cf. what Caiaphas said about Christ, Mat 26:65 .)
3. A cutting sarcasm (Job 15:7-8 ). Wast thou before Adam, or before the creation of the mountains, and a member of the Celestial Council considering the creation, that thou limitest wisdom to thyself?
4. An invidious comparison (Job 15:9-10 ). What knowest thou of which we are ignorant? With us are the gray-headed, much older than thy father.
5. A bigoted rebuke (Job 15:11-16 ). You count small the consolation of God we offered you in gentle words [the reader may determine for himself how much “comfort” they offered Job and note their conceit in calling this “God’s comfort,” and judge whether it was offered in “gentle” words]. Your passions run away with you. Here a quotation from Rosenmuller is in point: Quo te tuus animus rapit? “Whither does thy soul hurry thee?” Quid oculi qui tui vibrantes? “What means thy rolling eyes?” It turns against God; this is presumptuous: A man born of woman, depraved, against God in whose sight angels are imperfect and the heavens unclean. How much more an abominable, filthy man drinking iniquity like water.
The points in the continuation of the argument are as follows:
1. Hear me while I instruct thee (Job 15:17 ). I will tell you what I have seen.
2. It is the wisdom of the ancients handed down (Job 15:18-19 ). Wise men have received it from their fathers and have handed it down to us for our special good.
3. Concerning the doom of the wicked (Job 15:20-30 ). This is a wonderful description of the course of the wicked to their final destruction, but his statements, in many instances, are not true. For instance, in his first statement about the wicked (Job 15:20 ), he says, “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,” which is in accord with his theory, but does not harmonize with the facts in the case. The wicked does not travail with pain “all his days.” They are not terrified “all the time” as Eliphaz here pictures them. In this passage Eliphaz intimates that Job may be guilty of pride (Job 15:25 ) and of fatness (Job 15:27 ).
4. The application (Job 15:31-35 ). If what he said about the wicked was true, his application here to Job is wrong. It will be seen that Eliphaz here intimates that Job was guilty of vanity and self-deception; that he was, perhaps, guilty of bribery and deceit, and therefore the calamity had come upon him.
The following is a summary of Job’s reply (Job 16-17) :
1. Your speech is commonplace. I have heard many such things. Ye are miserable comforters (Job 16:2 ).
2. You persist when I have urged you to desist. It is unprovoked. Your words are vain, just words of wind (Job 16:3 ).
3. If our places were changed, I could do as you do, but I would not. I would helo and comfort you (Job 16:4-5 ).
4. You ask me to cease my complaint, but whether I speak or forbear, the result is the same. I have not ensnared my feet, but God has lassoed me (Job 16:6 ).
5. He gives a fearful description of God’s assault (Job 16:7-14 ): (1) as a hunter with hounds he has harried me; (2) he has abandoned me to the malice of mine enemies; (3) as a wrestler he has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces; (4) as an archer he has bound me to the stake and terrified and pierced me with his arrows; (5) as a mighty conqueror he opened breach after breach in my defenses with batteringrams; and (6) as a giant he rushes on me through the breach in the assault.
6. As a result, I am clothed in sackcloth and my dignity lies prone in the dust; my face is foul with weeping, my eyelids shadowed by approaching death, although no injustice on my part provoked it and my prayer was pure (Job 16:15-17 ).
7. I appeal to the earth to cover my blood and to the heavenly witness to vouch for me. Friends may scorn my tears, but they are unto God. (See passages in Revelation and Psalms.) Note here the messianic prayer, “that one might plead for a man with God, as a son of man pleadeth for his neighbor.” But my days are numbered and mockers are about me (Job 16:18-17:2 ).
8. The plea for a divine surety (messianic) but God has made me a byword, who had been a tabret. Future ages will be astonished at my case and my deplorable condition (Job 17:3-16 ).
There are several things in this speech worthy of note, viz: 1. The messianic desire which finds expression later as David and Isaiah adopt the words of Job to fit their Messiah. 2. Job is right in recognizing a malicious adversary, but wrong in thinking God his adversary; God only permitted these things to come to Job, but Satan brought them.
There are two parts of Bildad’s second speech (Job 18 ), viz: a rejoinder (Job 18:1-4 ) and an argument (Job 18:5-21 ). The main points of his rejoinder are:
1. Job hunts for words rather than speaks considerately.
2. Why are the friends accounted as beasts and unclean in your sight?
3. Job was just tearing himself with anger and altogether without reason.
4. A sarcasm: The earth will not be forsaken for thee nor will the rock be moved out of its place for thee (Job 18:1-4 ).
The argument (Job 18:5-21 ) is fine and much of it is true, but it is wrong in its application. The following are the points as applied to the wicked:
1. His light shall be put out.
2. The steps of his strength shall be straightened.
3. His own counsel shall be cast down.
4. There shall be snares everywhere for his feet.
5. Terrors of conscience shall smite him on every side.
6. He shall be destroyed root and branch and in memory.
There are also two parts to Job’s great reply: His expostulation with his friends (Job 19:1-6 ) and his complaint against God (Job 19:7-29 ). The points of his expostulation are:
1. Ye reproach me often without shame and deal hardly with me.
2. If I have sinned, it is not against you but my error remains with myself.
3. The snares you refer to are not because of my fault but they are from God, for he has subverted me and compassed me with his net.
The items of his complaint against God are as follows:
1. He will not hear me, though I am innocent; surely there is no justice.
2. He has walled me up and set darkness in my path.
3. He has stripped me of my glory and he has broken me down on every side.
4. He has plucked up my hope like a tree and his fiery wrath is against me.
5. He has counted me an adversary and I am besieged by armies round about.
6. He has put away from me my brethren, friends, kindred, family, servants, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
7. I appeal to you, O ye my friends, for pity instead of persecution.
8. Oh that my words were written in a book or were engraved with a pen of iron in the rock forever, but I know that my redeemer liveth and will at last stand upon the earth, and I shall behold him in my risen body, then to be vindicated by him.
9. Now I warn you to beware of injustice to me lest the sword come upon you, for there is a judgment ahead. Here it may be noted that Job 19:23-24 refer to the ancient method of writing and that Job expresses in Job 19:25-27 a great hope for the future. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer:
1. Does Job intend to convey the idea that he will see God apart from his body) i.e., when death separates soul and body?
2. Or does he mean that at the resurrection he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body?
3. If you hold the latter meaning, which version, after all, is the least misleading, the King James, the Revised, the American Standard Version, or Leeser’s Jewish translation? The answer is, Job here means that he will see God from the viewpoint of his risen body, as the King James Version conveys.
Zophar’s second speech is harsher than his first, and consists of a rejoinder (Job 20:1-3 ) and an argument (Job 20:4-29 ).
The points of his rejoinder are:
1. Haste is justified because of his thoughts;
2. The reproach of Job 19:28-29 , “If ye say, How may we pursue him and that the cause of the suffering is in me, then beware of the sword. My goel [redeemer] will defend me,” he answers thus: “Thus do my thoughts answer me and by reason of this there is haste in me; I hear the reproof that puts me to shame and the spirit of my understanding gives answer.
The points of his argument are:
1. Since creation the prosperity of the wicked has been short, his calamity sure and utter, extending to his children.
2. The very sweetness of his sin becomes poison to him.
3. He shall not look on streams flowing with milk, butter, and honey.
4. He shall restore and shall not swallow it down, even according to all that he has taken.
5. In the height of his enjoyment the sword smites him and the arrow pierces him,
6. Darkness wraps him, terrors fright him, and heaven’s supernatural fires burn him.
7. Heaven reveals his iniquity and earth rises up against him. This is the heritage appointed unto him by God. Certain other scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, viz: Exo 3:8 ; Exo 13:5 ; Exo 33:3 ; 2Ki 18:32 ; Deu 31:20 ; Isa 7:22 ; Joe 3:18 , and several classic authors refer to them, also, as Pindar, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. It will be noted that Zophar intimates that Job might be guilty of hypocrisy (Job 19:12 ), of oppressing the poor (Job 19:19 ) and of greediness (Job 19:20 ).
Job’s reply (Job 21 ) is more collected than the former, and the points are as follows:
1. Hear me and then mock. This is only fair and may afterward prove a consolation to you.
2. Do I address myself to man for help? My address is to God and, because I am unheard, therefore I am impatient?
3. Mark me and be astonished. What I say even terrifies me.
4. The prosperity of the wicked who defy God is a well known fact.
5. How seldom is their light put out. They are not destroyed as you say.
6. Ye say God visits it on his children. What is that to him?
7. Here are two cases, one prosperous to the end and the other never so. The grave is sweet to both.
8. God’s reserved judgment is for the wicked. Do you not know this?
9. In conclusion I must say that your answers are falsehoods.
In this second round of speeches we have observed that Job has quieted down to a great extent and seems to have risen to higher heights of faith, while the three friends have become bolder and more desperate. They have gone beyond insinuations to intimations, thus suggesting certain sins of which Job might be guilty. While Job has greatly improved in his spirit and has ascended a long way from the depths to which he had gone in the moral tragedy, the climax of the debate has not yet been reached. Tanner says, “While the conflict of debate is sharper, Job’s temper is more calm; and he is perceptibly nearer a right attitude toward God. He is approaching a victory over his opponents, and completing the more important one over himself.”
QUESTIONS
1. Of what does the second speech of Eliphaz consist?
2. What the main points of the rejoinder (Job 15:1-16 )?
3. What the points in the continuation of the argument?
4. What summary of Job’s reply Job 16:16-17 )?
5. What things in this speech are worthy of note?
6. What the two parts of Bildad’s second speech Job 18:18 )?
7. What the main points of his rejoinder?
8. What can you say of his argument and what the points of it?
9. What the two parts to Job’s great reply?
10. What the points of his expostulation?
11. What the items of his complaint against God?
12. Explain Job 19:23-24 ,
13. What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?
14. Compare the several English translations of Job 19:26 with each other and the context and then answer: What great hope does Job express in Job 19:25-27 ?
15. How does Zophar’s second speech compare with the first and what the parts of this speech?
16. What the points of his rejoinder?
17. What the points of his argument?
18. What scriptures carry out the idea of milk, butter, and honey, and what classic authors refer to this?
19. What can you say of Job’s reply (Job 21 ) and what his points?
20. What have we found in the second round of speeches?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Job 20:1 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said,
Ver. 1. Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said ] “If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest,” Pro 29:9 . Christ piped to that crooked generation, John mourned to them, but all to no purpose; absurd and unreasonable people will never be satisfied or set down, say what yon can to them, such is their pertinacy and peevishness. Job had uttered himself in such passionate expressions as might have moved stony hearts, Sed surdo fabulam. He had set forth his own misery, begged their pity, made an excellent confession of his faith, every word whereof had its weight, each syllable its substance, Ubi habent fere singulae voces aliquid ponderis (Merl.); he had lastly terrified them with the threats of God’s sword; but nothing would do. Zophar here, though he had little to say more than what he had said, Job 11:1-20 , yet he takes occasion from Job’s last words, though full of love, to roughly hew at him again, and makes as if he were necessitated thereunto for his own and his fellows’ necessary defence. Vatablus thinks that Zophar here maketh answer, not to the preceding words, but to those in the 12th chapter, where Job had complained that wicked oppressors live commonly in greatest peace and prosperity. Whatever it is, Zophar henceforth will say no more; either he had said what he could, or was satisfied with Job’s reply in the next chapter; or, lastly, quia lusurum se operam credebat, as Mercer observeth; because he thought he should lose his labour, which no wise man would do.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Job Chapter 20
Chap. 20 Job was not a wicked man. There was the great error of Zophar – of this hasty and violent man; for evidently this was particularly his character. He was not so much looking at long experience as did Eliphaz – that was his point – long experience. A valuable thing, but still it may not be the mind of God. It may be right, or it may be wrong; and it was wrong in this case, because Job’s trial was altogether peculiar. God had not dealt with any other man in the remarkable way in which Job was tried, and that is the reason why we have a whole book about him – because he was tried so specially. No one save the Lord Jesus was ever tried like Job. The trials of our Lord were far more profound; but in Him. there was nothing but perfection, and why? Because, to begin with, there was no sin in Him; there was in Job, and Job did not think about the sin that was in him. Job had no idea of what the New Testament calls “the old man.” He had turned from Satan and from his sins to God; he was a real, true, saint of God. But he had no notion, nor, indeed, had anyone among the Old Testament saints, any definite conception of what our evil nature is. That was a truth that came out after Christ came. It was Christ that made everything clear, and till Christ came things were not plain. There was quite enough light to guide; and for that matter all the three friends were pious men, and Job particularly was; but for all that, Job had to learn that there was that in him which was proud of the effects of faith in his soul. Job had too good an opinion of himself.
This is not a very uncommon thing with a Christian even. I think I know a good many who are not disposed to think very lowlily of themselves; but I am quite sure (and I have nothing to boast of myself) I desire to feel thoroughly what I am. Yet I admit we are very often apt to forget it. There was no question of Job’s end, no question but that God would receive him, and had already received him in spirit; and therefore there was no fear of death in Job; he looked at it and desired it even; but that would spoil the great lesson. God would allow him to be tried thoroughly, but would not allow Satan so to torment him as to end his life – that would frustrate the lesson he had to learn by agony of suffering and suspicion of his own friends – his dearest friends, those who had most respected him. They all gave him up, and thought there was something very bad behind it – there could not be so much smoke without fire.
That is exactly what people say nowadays when they see anything particular. The eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell must be the worst people in Jerusalem! ‘Not at all,’ said the Lord. God has his own wonderful ways of which we know nothing; but “Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish” – by a worse perishing than the fall of a tower upon you. We find how a man was kept – not faultless, far from it – but entirely free from all the hidden evil that was imputed to him because of his terrible suffering, which entirely alienated, therefore, the sympathy of his friends; and instead of getting one grain of sympathy he got a good many tons of scorn, and their suspicion that things were very wrong in him.
This is what entered into all their speeches. And they get worse and worse for a while, and particularly this one. This is the last of Zophar’s; he poured it out so strongly, that, somehow or other, he was afraid to come forward again. We find that Eliphaz and Bildad do follow, and Job disposes of them all. They were completely taken aback by Job’s reasoning, and the reason is that there was a truthfulness about Job that was not in them, although a good deal remained for Job to learn. Therefore, in comes Elihu, a new personage in the matter, and after that Jehovah himself. These are facts. This is not an imaginary tale. There was a real person called Job who went through all this trial; and there were these three friends; and there was Elihu too; and, further, Jehovah made His presence and His mind known, and settled the case brought Job out of all his troubles, and at Job’s intercession pardoned the other three for all their bad and groundless ill-feeling against Job.
Well now, here Zophar comes forward. “Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste.” Yes, and that is just where haste generally lands us. It is easy for those who are not in trouble to speak, and to suspect evil of a man that is in the depths. And that is just what this young man – for he was younger than the others – fell into. “Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth” – are you the only man that knows the mind of God? – “that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?” Is that all that Zophar had ever learnt? Did he know of no dealings of God for the trial and good of His children here below? Had he no thought of God disciplining us? – even before His proper Fatherly relationship was fully made known and conferred upon us. For now we are brought into that very place of privilege – we are children of God. The Old Testament saints were so, but they did not know it. They were saints of God, and they know very well they were separated to God, and that they were not like the men of the world. They knew that perfectly, and they were waiting for One who would settle all questions and make known all things. Even the woman of Samaria knew that. “When Messias cometh, He will tell us all things.” He would clear up all difficulties.
But Zophar had no difficulty at all. That is generally the case with people who know very little; they fancy they know everything. Zophar, therefore, keeps up this – that there is the great fact, there is a righteous God above, and there are unrighteous, wicked people below, and God invariably deals with these wicked people now. That was not true. A large part of the world has always been allowed of God to apparently prosper in their evil, and the reason is that the time of judgment is not yet come. There may be judgments; there may be exceptional dealings with the wicked just as Job’s case was a very exceptional dealing in the severity of his trial, and in the manner in which Satan was challenged by God to do his very worst; and God was secretly keeping up Job even when he was finding fault with God and thinking He was very hard upon him to allow all this. But he was kept up not only for his own good, but for ours. Now we have the Book, and are meant to profit by it for ourselves and for other people. “Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung; they which have seen him shall say, where is he?”
Zophar was not at all wanting in power of expression. He was what you call an “eloquent” man; in fact, they were all eloquent. They all pleaded their cause with ability – only there was short-sightedness. They had not before them this – that it was out of the goodness of God, and for the blessing of Job himself, that God made Job to recognize his nothingness, and also the evil that was within, which he had never detected to be, as it is, a sin against God, i.e., thinking too well of himself, taking credit for what grace had wrought. For I do not deny that grace had done a good deal for Job. Grace had wrought a fine character, full of benevolence and rectitude of purpose. Yes, but why did Job dwell upon it, and think so much about it? Why did Job think so much more highly of himself than others? All these things were working in Job’s mind, and they must all be brought out. That was a great lesson for Job to learn, and it came out at the very severe cost of Job’s trial and suffering. “He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found.” That was true of some cases; but where were the eyes, where the discernment of Zophar? and this was all that he saw going on in the world! It was a very narrow way of looking at the dealings of God. “The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him. His children shall seek to please the poor” – he supposes that God would still keep up the family, and would deal with his children – that they would have to restore some of the ill-gotten goods that their father had acquired.
All this was pointed at poor Job, but not a particle of it was real. It was nothing but evil surmises. So, he describes his case in very strong terms, which I need not follow- – all his inward trouble, and the being forced to give up what he had swallowed down. “He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.” That is, Zophar recognised that God delights in doing good. Yes, He does; and not merely to the righteous, but to the unthankful and evil. Is it that He has any complacency in them? Quite the contrary, but out of His own goodness, as our Lord put it so simply and so grandly, He causes His sun to shine upon the evil as well as upon the good, and He sends His rain upon the just as well as upon the unjust. Well, before all I say now, he is a most wicked man, the greatest enemy of God alive on the earth, who profits by all these benefits, and never thinks of God at all. There he is, so utterly insensible – more insensible possibly than the brute. There is less gratitude than with even the poor irrational brute who owns his master’s kindness and care. This is indeed, an awful thing in a man. You might find men of the greatest education and of the highest ability, who are like a stock or a stone before the goodness of God. That you have now. The New Testament has come in and made it all plain. One word accounts for everything – unbelief.
The beginning of God’s goodness in a man is when he comes to the sense of his badness, and that is produced by faith. It is by what God sends. God’s word is the foundation and the means by which a man is brought out of darkness into light, and out of death into life eternal. And why? Because the word of God reveals Christ. And the believer receives Christ on God’s testimony. Now the great mass of men in our country are rushing either into infidelity or superstition. These are both of them making more progress than the truth, at this present moment. God no doubt converts souls too; but if there are a few souls truly converted, how many go back? and sometimes out of the very families of those that love the Lord! So it has been for hundreds of years. So it was at the beginning; so it is now. Some believe the words that are spoken, and some do not believe them. And as some enter now into endless and eternal blessing, so others will fall into absolute and everlasting ruin.
Here then, we see the all-importance of our getting the mind of God. Neither experience will do, nor tradition. Bildad was as fond of tradition as Eliphaz was of experience; but Zophar, I fancy, was pretty much confident in himself. And this self-confidence is what makes a man still more biassed than either the weakness of thinking too much of the wisdom of old age, or of the tradition of the elders before us. No, God will have His own word; and God is honoured by our receiving His own word and applying His word, not to other people merely, but, above all, to oneself. Everything issues from this, “I believe.” That is exactly where all human knowledge fails. Human knowledge – science for instance – is entirely founded upon the facts that are before our eyes, or the facts that we gather even if they are invisible to our eyes, that are ascertained through whatever means, sometimes by the microscope, sometimes by the telescope – but however it may be, it is all founded upon what is before man’s eyes and before man’s mind.
Now the blessing of God is entirely founded upon divine testimony. You honour God by believing God against yourself; by believing God against your sins; by believing God, receiving His testimony about His own Son. But God has love enough in His heart to lay all our case at all costs upon the Lord Jesus; and He has perfectly met all the mind of God about it. That is Christianity now; and this, of course, in Job’s days, was yet to be. There was just enough light – a little distant gleam as it were – a rift in the cloud that showed the Messiah that was to come, but that was all. There was a little increase of light in the Psalms, and still more in the Prophets; but the full light was never there till He Himself came. Then it was not merely a gleam; it was not merely a promise; it was Himself. It was the Son of God, and eternal life in the Son of God to be given to everyone who believes in Him. By that I do not mean a mere nominal assent. No, beloved friends, it is always through our conscience that we are brought into the truth. There is no divine link with God unless it be the conscience that acknowledges our sinfulness, and, therefore, casts oneself in faith upon the Lord Jesus.
Well, now, we do not find anything of this in Zophar; it is all looking simply at judging wicked men. The judging of a righteous man never entered his mind, and that was the real question. So he puts to Job the awfulness of what will come to pass upon the man that goes on in his wickedness, and does not allow it, but only is clever in hiding it. And really he had got that in his head about Job, and never could get it out until God brought down everyone of them into the dust, and they were indebted to Job for escaping the severe chastening of God. He finishes, “This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God.” Here is not the slightest sense of God having chastening dealings with those that He loves during this time of pilgrimage. Yet this is exactly what God does. This is what He is carrying on today with you and me. The apostle Peter refers to it particularly in the first chapter of his First Epistle, i.e., that after we are born of God we become subjects of the dealings of God as Father. We are judged every man according to his work now. He will not do that by and by; the future judgment is entirely in the hands of Christ; and it is particularly said that the Father has committed it all to the Son; and it is as the Son, and as the glorified Man too, that the Lord will sit upon the Great White Throne, where all the evil of all the unrighteous will be judged finally. That is the last thing before the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The Father has nothing to do with that; but the Father has everything to do with watching over our faults, with pruning the vine, every branch of the vine, and this is what goes on now. It is the Father who is the husbandman, and He prunes that we may bear more fruit; and if there is no fruit at all, He takes it away.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
answered = spake again. See note on Job 4:1.
Zophar. See note on Job 2:11.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 20
So Zophar, the third of the speakers, gives his second discourse. And again, he was the guy that was dealing with traditions earlier, and with wisdom and all, so he said to Job,
Therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer, and for this I make haste ( Job 20:2 ).
In others words, “I want to be quick to answer you on this.”
I have heard the check of my reproach, and the spirit of my understanding causes me to answer. Don’t you know this of old, since man was placed on the earth, That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite is for a moment? ( Job 20:3-5 )
He won’t get off, you know, the same tune. “Job you’re wicked. Job you’re a hypocrite.”
Though his excellency mount up to heavens, and the head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: for they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. And the eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him. His children shall seek to please the poor, his hands shall restore their goods. His bones are full of the sins of his youth, and he shall lie down with him in the dust. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, and though he hide it under his tongue; Though he spare it, and forsake it not; but keep it still within his mouth: Yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly. He shall suck the poison of asps: and the viper’s tongue shall slay him. He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter. That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down: according to his substance shall be the restitution, and he shall not rejoice therein. Because ( Job 20:6-19 )
And this is now, here is what Zophar is suggesting that Job’s evil was.
Because he has oppressed and has forsaken the poor; because he has violently taken away a house that he did not build ( Job 20:19 ).
“You’ve repossessed a house, Job. And you’ve taken away and oppressed the poor people.” These are suggestions of Job’s wickedness.
Surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly, he shall not save of that which he desired. There shall none of his meat be left; therefore shall no man look for his goods. In the fullness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits: every hand of the wicked shall come upon him. When he is about to fill his belly, God will cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through. It is drawn, and comes out of the body; yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him. All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; and it shall go ill with him that is left of his tent. The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; the earth shall rise up against him. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God ( Job 20:20-29 ).
These guys just keep coming on with Job, insisting that he is wicked, that he is a hypocrite. They have the one tune; they can’t get off of it. “And all of your problems are because you are so sinful and so wicked.”
Now, you say, “But why does the Lord labor this so much?” Because there are people that are still that stupid today. That if you get in trouble, they’ll come around and say, “Well, brother, why don’t you repent? You know, so you can be prosperous. Why don’t you forsake your sin? Because surely if you are good, God is going to prosper you. And if you’re evil, you’re going to be cut off.” But that is not so. Righteous people suffer. Evil people prosper. Righteous people prosper. Evil people suffer. We don’t know. We don’t know why righteous people oft times suffer. We don’t know. It is wrong to assume things about a person because he’s suffering. It’s wrong to assume that a person doesn’t have the faith, and thus he is sick. It is wrong to assume that if you just had enough faith, you would never be sick, because it just isn’t so.
And God allows this point to be pressed over and over from several different directions, to show the folly of seeking with our human wisdom and understanding to try to find out the ways and the reasons and the why’s of God. We don’t know them. The question of the book of Job is: why do godly people suffer? The question is not really answered. But what we are brought to is the assurance and the understanding that God does rule over our lives. And thus, I don’t have to understand the why, all I have to understand is the fact that God is in control, and I rest there. God controls the affairs of my life.
Shall we pray.
Father, help us that we will not be guilty of speaking deceitfully for You. Thinking that we understand more than we do, the causes, the reasons, the whys, the particular things that happen to certain people. Help us, Father, that we will be intercessors. And if a brother be overtaken in a fall, may we restore him in a spirit of weakness. If a brother is down, may we seek to lift him up. May we stretch out our hand of love and understanding to those who have fallen. Give us a heart like Yours, Lord, a heart of compassion for the oppressed and for the needy. In Jesus’ name. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Job 20:1-5
Introduction
Job 20
ZOPHAR’S SECOND SPEECH:
ZOPHAR’S MISLEADING; UNTRUTHFUL; INSULTING SPEECH
We reject the viewpoint of commentators who speak of Zophar’s “eloquent” sermon on the fate of the wicked. No speech is either honest or truthful that is designed to destroy a true servant of God; and, in our evaluation of Zophar’s crude and insulting speech, we must take into account his purpose, namely, that of forcing an innocent man to repent of sins he had not committed.
Yes, Zophar in this speech described the fate of the wicked; but like every evil philosophy it was only partially founded in truth: (1) Zophar’s description of what often happened to wicked men appeared here as a description of what always, invariably, and without exception happened! (2) Zophar’s description was purely materialistic. This earthly life, to Zophar, was all there is. There was no understanding or allowance whatever for ultimate rewards or punishments. (3) To Zophar, no wicked man had any hope whatever. He had no conception whatever of the universal wickedness of mankind; and to him, the righteous were the wealthy and prosperous people, and the wicked were those in poverty or suffering. (4) Many of his most dogmatic assertions were blatant falsehoods, as for example, (a) that the wicked die early (Job 20:11), and (b) that gains shall be removed from the wicked in this life (Job 20:15). Zophar’s speech was fully in keeping with the evil design of Satan.
Rawlinson’s excellent summary of Zophar’s diatribe is as follows:
“This second speech is even worse than his first (Job 11). Coarseness and rudeness are added to his former hostility (Job 20:7; Job 20:15). His whole discourse is a covert denunciation of Job as a wicked hypocrite (Job 20:5; Job 20:12; Job 20:19; Job 20:29), who is receiving only the punishment he deserves for a life of crime. He concludes by prophesying Job’s violent death, the destruction of his house, and the rising up of heaven and earth as witnesses against him.
Of course, these lying prophecies should be added to the roster of Zophar’s falsehoods.
Job 20:1-5
ZOPHAR RUDELY BREAKS INTO JOB’S NOBLE WORDS
“Then answered Zophar the
Naamathite, and said,
Therefore do my thoughts give answer to me,
Even by reason of my haste that is in me.
I have heard the reproof that putteth me to shame;
And the spirit of my understanding answereth me.
Knowest thou not this of old time,
Since man was placed upon earth,
That the triumphing of the wicked is short,
And the joy of the godless but for a moment?”
“By reason of my haste that is in me” (Job 20:2). Matthew Henry noted that, “It seems here that Zophar broke in upon Job and began abruptly.” Zophar, as the willing instrument of Satan here, was greatly displeased with the Divine Message Job was in the process of speaking, a message of the Redeemer for all mankind, a message delivered “by the direct inspiration of God,” a message concerning which Job entertained no doubt or uncertainty whatever. He did not say, “I hope,” or “I think,” and not even that “I believe,” but that, “I KNOW that my Redeemer liveth.”
It seems incredible that Zophar could have rudely butted in and concluded Job’s inspired words. Zophar was insensitive to all that Job said. He was like those West Texas buzzards that sail with obscene wings above flower fields and gardens searching for and finding only some rotting carcass on a hillside. Zophar passed over, with out even hearing it, one of the sublimest promises in the Word of God, only to compare Job to the dunghill on which he sat. God pity the Zophars of our own generation.
“Knowest thou not this of old time” (Job 20:4)? “This is a mocking question.” It is the equivalent of, “What a fool you are not to know what everybody else has known for ages’!
“The triumphing of the wicked is short” (Job 20:5). “He is sure that the wicked does not keep his property very long; such a thing has never happened in the range of human experience.” Had Zophar never heard of Cain? This, of course, is another of Zophar’s falsehoods.
E.M. Zerr:
Job 20:1-2. Zophar’s second turn to speak came next. It will be well to state again the position of the friends in the discussion. They claimed that God never afflicted a man except as a punishment for some sin. Since Job was afflicted it meant that he had sinned and should make full amends for it in order to be restored to health. Job did not claim to be absolutely perfect, but he did deny that his affliction was a special punishment from God since all classes of men were known to have afflictions. In this discussion the friends stated some truths but they had no bearing on the issue being considered. In this paragraph Zophar stated his reasons for speaking again, that his thoughts drove him to it.
Job 20:3. Check of my reproach means that Job had reproached Zophar by checking his thoughts; for that reason he just had to speak again.
Job 20:4-5. Job would readily have agreed to the statement about the wicked man’s triumphs. Therefore, there was no point made on the discussion at hand.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
With evident haste, Zophar replied. His speech is introduced with an apology for his haste and a confession of his anger. He had heard the reproof, but he was not convinced; and the spirit of his understanding prompted him to reply. His reply is like that of Bildad, but is characterized by even greater force and more terrible description.
He opened with a general declaration on the brevity of wickedness. This he argued by tracing the course of an imaginary person who is godless. In a passage thrilling with passion, he described the instability of evil gains. There is a triumph, but it is short. There is a mounting up, but it is succeeded by swift vanishing. There is a sense of youth, but it becomes dust. There is a sweetness, but it becomes remorse; a swallowing down which ends in vomiting; a getting without rejoicing.
The reason for all this he then declared. The pathway has been one of oppression until the oppressed turned on the oppressor. The final nemesis is fearfully set forth. God turns on him, pursues him with the instruments of judgment. Darkness enwraps him. His sin is set in the light of the heavens, and earth rejects him. The speech ends, as in the case of Bildad, with an application (29). Throughout the description Job had evidently been in mind, and he is left to make the application.
Thus, in the second cycle the proposition made by each man with varying emphasis was that it is the wicked who suffer.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
The Triumphing of the Wicked
Job 20:1-29
Zophar is the man who least of all understood Job. The rebuke which Job had just administered, Job 19:28-29, has vexed him, so that he speaks with impatience.
The theme of Zophars speech is the brevity of the prosperity of the wicked. He claims that this is an acknowledged principle, Job 20:4; then proceeds to show it by many striking metaphors.
Hypocrite, Job 20:5, is godless in the r.v.; and in describing the prosperity and speedy destruction of such, Job 20:5-11, he manifestly applies his words to Job. He refuses to pay any heed to Jobs protestations of innocence. His theology was: God is righteous; he blesses and prospers the good, and destroys the wicked. Job was being destroyed; therefore Job was wicked. Thus often do we in our ignorance misunderstand God and cruelly misjudge man.
Zophar descends to more particulars. He describes the pleasure which the ungodly has in sin, Job 20:12-13; how his sin becomes his punishment, Job 20:14-22; and how terrible destruction at last visits him, Job 20:23-28, as his portion from God, Job 20:29. Though in all this Zophar was wrong in applying it to Jobs case, and equally wrong in supposing that this life is the place of judgment for the wicked, yet it is important to remember that he was right in seeing a very real connection between sin and punishment. However sweet sin may be to the taste, it is sure to become bitter as the gall of asps ere long. The pleasures of sin are but for a season.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Job 20:11
The enduring effects of early transgression.
I. Notice, first, how difficult and almost impossible it is, in reference to the present scene of being, to make up by after-diligence for time lost in youth. It is appointed by God that one stage of life should be strictly preparatory to another, just as our own residence on earth is to immortality in the invisible world.
II. This truth is exemplified with reference to bodily health. The man who has injured his constitution by the excesses of youth cannot repair the mischief by after-acts of self-denial. He must carry with him to the grave impaired energies and trembling limbs, and feel and exhibit the painful tokens of premature old age.
III. The possession of the iniquities of youth affects men when stirred with anxiety for the soul, and desirous to seek and obtain the pardon of sin. The great battle which a man has to fight when endeavouring to conform himself to the will of God is a battle with his own evil habits. And what are habits but the entailment of the sins of youth?
IV. However genuine and effectual the repentance and faith of a late period in life, it is unavoidable that the remembrance of misspent years will embitter those which you consecrate to God. Even with those who have begun early it is a constant source of regret that they began not earlier. What then shall be said of such as enter the vineyard at the tenth hour, or the eleventh, but that they must be haunted with the memory of prostituted powers, and squandered strength, and dissipated time, and that they must sorrow frequently over sins for which they can make no amends?
V. By lengthening the period of irreligion, and therefore diminishing that of obedience to God, we almost place ourselves amongst the last of the competitors for the kingdom of heaven. The lesson to the young is to remember their Creator, and not to forget that what may be done hereafter can never be done so well as now.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2183.
Reference: Job 20-S. Cox, Expositor, 1st series, vol. vii., pp. 264, 321; Ibid., Commentary on Job, p. 261.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 20 The Second Address of Zophar
1. Zophars swift reply (Job 20:1-3)
2. Another description of the life and fate of the wicked (Job 20:4-29)
Job 20:1-3. Zophar, the twitterer, begins his reply to Job with impatient haste. Jobs words, probably those found in chapter 19:2-3, and the last two verses, have made him angry. He boils over with indignation. He is ready now to confirm the testimony already given and wound the suffering servant of God still more.
Job 20:4-29. He follows the same path and there is again nothing new in his argument. The description of the wicked is great; no fault can be found with what he says about those who are ungodly. The triumphing of the wicked, and the joy of the ungodly is for a moment only. He is bound to perish Swiftly; like a dream, like a vision he vanisheth away. His children remain poverty stricken. He may swallow down riches, but he vomits them up again. And so he continues in his portrayal of the ungodly. Wrath is finally coming upon him. Such is the portion of the wicked man from God. But the serious mistake Zophar made is twofold. Job had pleaded for pity. Not a word of pity comes from Zophars lips. The whole address is meant to tell Job Thou art that man! And the second mistake, he does not consider for a moment Jobs utterance which could not come from the lips of an ungodly person, but from one who knows God.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Zophar: Job 2:11, Job 11:1, Job 42:9
Reciprocal: Job 15:34 – the congregation
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Job 20:1. Then answered Zophar Here Zophar, although he had nothing new to advance, hastily interrupts Job, being extremely provoked by his threatening them with the judgments of God, and in his speech appears to be hurried by his passion beyond all bounds. He tells him it is in vain to tax their suspicions with unkindness; for it was of public notoriety, agreeable to the universal experience of mankind, ever since the creation, that suffering was the portion of the wicked. He then, under colour of describing the wicked man, and his destiny, charges Job with the most enormous crimes, and marks him out as a person in whom God had given an example of the justice of his providence; and concludes with a plain intimation, that he was thoroughly persuaded that Job was that very wicked man, that oppressor of the poor, which they had from the beginning suspected him to be.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 20:2. I make haste to answer, for thou reproachest both God and us. Zophar had felt the point of Jobs sword, in the preseding discourse; but the present chapter may well be considered as a most interesting specimen of patriarchal eloquence. It is admired among the Hebrews, many of the phrases being cited in the book of Psalms. The greater part is allegory, or a continuation of figures, illustrative of crime and punishment, of destruction to the wicked, and the most abject poverty to his house.
Job 20:7. He shall perishlike his own dung. A figure of speech denoting contempt and infamy.
Job 20:10. His children shall seek to please the poor, a profligate father having left them without either a fortune or trade.
Job 20:11. His bones are full of the sins of his youth. elomav, secret sins. This is true of our prodigals, who frequent the haunts of infamy; but surely in no sense but that of passion, and passion devoid of reason, could Zophar apply this to Job.
Job 20:17. The brooks of honey; a fine allusion to the affluence of rural life.
Job 20:18. That which he laboured for shall he restore. Nearly all crimes, in the laws of our Saxon king Ina, were punished by a scale of fines.
Job 20:19. He hath violently taken away a house, from the poor man under some plea of debt, till in the issue he hath no house for himself to live in.
Job 20:26. A fire not blown, of war, as in Job 20:25; or perhaps in allusion to that which consumed Sodom. The Chaldaic reads, the fire of Gehenna, as in Mar 9:45; consequently those rabbins understood it of hell fire, which cannot be quenched: the portion of men who forget God.
Job 20:27. The heavens shall reveal his iniquity. Bishop Reynolds has left us a small folio, chiefly recording Italian cases of Gods revenge against murder and adultery. But his book is small compared with the volume which providence unfolds, in bringing secret crimes to light, and culprits to judgment. Yea, the earth responding to the voice of God, rises up against the wicked. Happy is the offender who exonerates his conscience from the burden of crimes, by timely and unfeigned repentance, and repairing to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.
REFLECTIONS.
Having seen in the preseding chapter the sublime appeal which Job made from the painful judgment of his friends, to the bar of heaven; and having heard him seriously impeach his friends, and menace them with divine visitation, Zophar caught fire at his words, and became impetuous in reply. His strokes of eloquence are the effusions of a soul penetrated and filled with the subject. He viewed Job as wicked, though he had the name of a saint; he viewed his excellence as ascending to heaven; and then with amplitude and tints of deepest shade, discovers a masters hand in the portrait of his destruction. By addressing Job in the third person, he combines politeness with terror; and he so manages passion as to give the harder blows by allowing extent to his arm. The whole of this terrific scenery, though short, is yet so complete, that Homer, Virgil, and Milton, at the head of poets; and Herodotus, the father of history, with all his sons, might study eloquence in the school of those patriarchs; for making nature their sole preceptor, they gave finished copies of the human heart. The sentiments here are more to be admired than the words. Never was stricture more pointed against avarice, hypocrisy, and oppression, than Zophars speech. Wealth gained by wickedness is utterly abhorrent both with God and man: yet where is the successful tradesman who is pure? Where the hoary opulence of mercantile life; and where the mushroom splendour of the Indian adventurer, which can purge itself from illicit gain? Where are the favourites of commercial fortune who can say, my hands are clean from the blood, and my treasuries are pure from the bowels of the poor? Will not God then reject their devotion, and bid them wash their hands in innocency, before they compass his altar?
The grand object however on which this speech turns, is the punishments which await the oppressor. He is shrouded with corruption, his splendid history vanishes as a dream, his place is empty, his children are pitied by the poor, his food becomes poison, he vomits his riches on the earth, he is menaced by death in a thousand forms, the heavens reveal his iniquity, and the earth, stained with his crimes, rises up against him. This is the portion, and this the heritage appointed of God to the wicked.
But if this be the situation of a wicked man, is there no remedy before the final evils come? Must he still proceed from crime to crime; and shall no one teach him better, and make him ashamed? Is he fated to proceed in the high career of crimes, and in full route to perdition? Let him relieve his conscience by restitution, let him try repentance and fasting. Who can tell if the Lord will repent of the evil, and turn away from his fierce indignation?
If he be unable to make restitution to the injured, through distance of place, or lapse of time, let him estimate the wrongs and give it to the poor, to whom God is the permanent guardian and trustee. Let him also add thereto, not merely as a gift, but as a trespass-offering to the Lord, for the aid of religion and virtue. Let his hands, in this way, restore the goods of the poor: otherwise, though he have swallowed down riches, God will force him to vomit them up again. It is by this repentance, and repentance accompanied by those fruits, that the wicked man may hope for a reverse of his sentence, and be enabled to face with confidence the spotless tribunal of eternal justice.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 20. Second Speech of Zophar.Zophar helps the return to the wider problem by appearing once more with a strong doctrine as to the shortness of the prosperity of the wicked. His theme is, Sin brings its own reward.
Job 20:1-3. Zophar replies to Jobs exasperating words (Job 19:1-6). In Job 20:2 b mg. is probably to be followed. In Job 20:3 b Duhm, on the basis of LXX, reads, and with wind void of understanding thou answerest me.
Job 20:4-29. The portion of the wicked. How short is his joy, how utter his destruction! In Job 20:4 the literal translation of the Heb. is knowest thou this of old. In that case the question is a mocking one (Peake). In Job 20:10 Budde reads for his hands his children with slight alteration and better sense.
Job 20:11 says that while his bones are still full of youth it (his youth) is prematurely buried in the grave.
Job 20:12 f. describes sin as a dainty morsel kept in the mouth; but (Job 20:14) it is poison when swallowed. In Job 20:15 the morsel swallowed becomes ill-gotten gam. In Job 20:20 within him is lit, in his belly, which is regarded as the seat of insatiable greed. With Job 20:23 we come to the Divine judgment upon the wicked man; here mg. is to be preferred: Let it be for the filling of his belly that God shall cast the fierceness of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him as his food.
Job 20:24 represents the wicked man as attacked by warriors.
Job 20:25 means that, hoping to save his life, he draws out the arrow which has struck him; but the terrors of death seize upon him.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
THE WICKED MAN’S BRIEF TRIUMPH
(vv.1-5)
Zophar does not even consider the possibility that Job is not wicked, but again strongly condemns the wicked, making it evident that he is really speaking of Job. He was evidently greatly stirred, not by the Spirit of God, but by his own misguided thoughts (v.2). Job had asked for some pity, but Zophar thinks he only deserves the opposite. He had heard Job’s rebuke that was a reproach to Zophar, but makes it clear that he will accept no rebuke. He fights back with “the spirit of his understanding” (v.3), not by the Spirit of God.
Did Job not know that “he triumphing of the wicked is short?” (vv.4-5). Of course Job knew this, but Zophar was thinking of Job’s earlier history as the triumphing of the wicked, now cut short by his adversity. His joy being cut short was proof to Zophar that Job was a hypocrite. However, was the triumphing of the wicked always as short as Zophar implied? No. Asaph speaks of this in Psa 73:1-28 when he “saw the prosperity of the wicked” (v.3). They might go through life with no real adversity, but their triumph is cut short at least when they die, as Asaph learned in the sanctuary, as he says, “I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end” (Psa 73:17).
THE WICKED SOON CUT OFF
(vv.6-11)
“Though his haughtiness mounts up to the heavens, and his head reaches to the clouds, yet he will perish forever like his own refuse” (vv.6-7). These words were cruelly unfair to Job. While he was remiss in the way he spoke of God, yet Job’s words cannot be rightly considered haughty. Zophar speaks as though Job’s haughtiness was excessively bad, and goes so far as to predict that Job would perish forever! Of course this was absolutely false as to Job, though it is true of the wicked.
The following verses (8-9) speak of people missing the wicked man, asking where he is, for as a dream he goes as quickly as he comes. Why “his children seek the favour of the poor” may not be too easily understood, and there is some question as to the translation, “his hands restore his wealth.” But his bones that were once full of fruitful strength will be reduced to the dust of death (v.11).
POISONED WITH HIS OWN VENOM
(vv.12-16)
Zophar is remarkably graphic, and correct, in describing the plight of the wicked man. This section shows that man’s wickedness comes back upon himself. Evil may be sweet in his mouth, virtually hiding it under his tongue, willing to speak wickedness instead of judging it and forsaking it (vv.12-13). He keeps it in his mouth and soon swallows it, and his stomach turns sour (v.14). What he swallows becomes as cobra venom.
Zophar continues his graphic description of the wicked man, saying that he swallows down his criminally obtained riches, but vomits them up again (v.15). He is like a drunkard with delirium tremens. At first when he drinks, the pleasure of it deceives him, and his pleasure soon turns to bitterness. He has himself been guilty of sucking the poison of cobras, and the results of this can be only his own fault: he destroys himself (v.16).
NO REFUGE IN PAST PROSPERITY
(vv.17-20)
Thus, the wicked will not see what he has in the past depended on, “the rivers flowing with honey and cream.” That for which he laboured will not sustain him now (v.18), and from the proceeds of his past business he will get no resulting enjoyment. The reason for this Zophar considers to be that “he has oppressed and forsaken the poor, he has violently seized a house which he did not build” (v.19). Of course this may be true of some wicked men, but to charge Job with such crime was itself a repulsive crime.
“Because he knows no quietness in his heart, he will not save anything he desires.” It is true that God will allow no quietness in the heart of a wicked man; but Job did not enjoy quietness in his heart because of his sufferings. Zophar knew this and supposed Job was therefore wicked. Would Job then save nothing he desired? Thus Zophar would discourage Job from ever expecting any good to come out of his afflictions. How little he knew the heart of God, who moved Paul at a later date to write, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2Co 4:17).
RETRIBUTION
(vv.21-25)
Not only could a wicked man find his own wickedness recoiling on him, and find no help in his past experiences, but he could also expect harsh retribution from the hand of God. “Nothing is left for him to eat,” Zophar says; his prosperity will not last, his self-sufficiency will only serve to mock him, and misery would come on him from every hand (vv.21-22). Though he intends to fill his stomach in self-satisfaction, God would cast on him the fury of His wrath and rain His anger on him while he is eating (v.23). Job felt that this was practically what God was doing to him, and Zophar seemed glad to “rub it in,” to make Job all the more miserable. But this could not persuade Job that he was wicked, for he knew such accusations against him were false.
“He will flee from the iron weapon” (v.24). This may remind us of Joseph, who “was laid in irons” (Psa 105:18), the iron speaking of hard, unyielding circumstances, that in Joseph’s case found him calmly submissive, but caused Job to want to flee, as with most of us, we want to avoid the hardness of trials. One might ask, would Zophar feel submissive if an iron weapon threatened him? or would he want to flee from it? But he was not in the same predicament as Job, and could speak quite confidently about others. “A bronze bow will pierce him through,” evidently speaking of the arrow from the bow. Thus he is pierced through with terror.
GOD’S WRATH WITH NO ALLEVIATION
(vv.26-29)
This section emphasises more strongly Zophar’s words of the previous section, declaring the total, unmitigated wrath of God toward a wicked man. “Total darkness is reserved for his treasures” (v.26). Actually total darkness will be the case for all who reject the grace of God in Christ Jesus, “the blackness of darkness forever (Jud 1:13). But Job had said, “In my flesh I shall see God” (ch.19:26): he certainly did not expect the blackness of darkness forever. Nor would the fire of hell consume him, as the wicked will experience. It is true enough that the heavens would reveal the iniquity of the wicked, and even the earth would rise up against him. All that he has gained on earth will depart, nothing left to show for his life here, in the day of God’s wrath (vv.27-28). Thus Zophar ends his discourse, “This is the portion from God for a wicked man, the heritage appointed to him by God” (v.29). There was a good measure of truth in what he said, but his inferring that Job was identified with such a class of evil-doers was not only unfair; it was inexcusably false.
From this time on Zophar had nothing more to say, though both Eliphaz and Bildad responded again to Job’s strong protests, Eliphaz rather briefly, and Bildad much more briefly. Then the whole field was left to Job, whose closing arguments occupied nine chapters, and left his friends with nothing in the way of response. Very likely Eliphaz was the eldest of these friends, and Zophar the youngest, for Eliphaz appears to have had more experience, and experience that should have given him more understanding of Job’s actual condition and needs. Zophar however, as is often the case with young and inexperienced men, assumed that he had more discernment than his elders, particularly Job, who was no doubt much older than he, but whom he did not hesitate to castigate without proper reason. Eliphaz had at least at first shown some consideration of Job, and when he witnessed the inconsiderate viciousness of Zophar, one would think he would at least have cautioned the younger man against excessive speech. But they were sadly united in their opposition to Job.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
5. Zophar’s second speech ch. 20
This speech must have hurt Job more than any that his friends had presented so far. Zophar was brutal in his attack. He continued the theme of the fate of the wicked that Eliphaz and Bildad had emphasized. However, whereas Eliphaz stressed the distress of the wicked and Bildad their trapped position, Zophar elaborated on the fact that wicked people lose their wealth. He had nothing new to say, but he said it passionately.
"Zophar is deeply disturbed by Job’s accusations that the friends are increasing his torment and that God is the source of his present affliction. But unfortunately he does not know how to comfort Job. Neither does he know how to address the issues Job has raised. After a brief rebuke of Job he delivers a long discourse on a single topic-the certain evil fate of every evildoer. He is indirectly rejecting Job’s assertion that God will appear as his Redeemer to vindicate him. He counters Job’s statement of confidence by saying that the heavens and the earth will stand as witnesses against the evildoer, even against Job. In his view Job’s hope is false, and it is deluding him." [Note: Hartley, p. 299.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Zophar’s anger 20:1-3
"Therefore" (Job 20:2) must refer to what Job had said. Job had previously asked why his friends answered him (Job 16:3). Zophar replied that the spirit of his understanding made him answer (Job 20:3 b).
"This phrase means both that Zophar’s spirit is compelling him to respond to Job (c. Job 32:18) and that his words come from reasoned insight (cf. Fohrer)." [Note: Ibid., p. 300.]
Again he seems to be claiming innate, instinctive knowledge (cf. ch. 11).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
XVII.
IGNORANT CRITICISM OF LIFE
Job 20:1-29
ZOPHAR SPEAKS
THE great saying that quickens our faith and carries thought into a higher world conveyed no Divine meaning to the man from Naamah. The author must have intended to pour scorn on the hide bound intelligence and rude bigotry of Zophar, to show him dwarfed by self-content and zeal not according to knowledge. When Job affirmed his sublime confidence in a Divine Vindicator, Zophar caught only at the idea of an avenger. What is this notion of a Goel on whose support a condemned man dares to count, who shall do judgment for him? And his resentment was increased by the closing words of Job:-
“If ye say, How may we pursue him?
And that the cause of the matter is in me-
Then beware of the sword!
For hot are the punishments of the sword.
That ye may know there is judgment.”
If they went on declaring that the root of the matter, that is, the real cause of his affliction, was to be found in his own bad life, let them beware the avenging sword of Divine justice. He certainly implies that his Goel may become their enemy if they continue to persecute him with false charges. To Zophar the suggestion is intolerable. With no little irritation and anger he begins:-
“For this do my thoughts answer me,
And by reason of this there is haste in me-
I hear the reproof which puts me to shame,
And the spirit of my understanding gives me answer.”
He speaks more hotly than in his first address, because his pride is touched, and that prevents him from distinguishing between a warning and a personal threat. To a Zophar every man is blind who does not see as he sees, and every word offensive that bids him take pause. Believers of his kind have always liked to appropriate the defence of truth, and they have seldom done anything but harm. Conceive the dulness and obstinacy of one who heard an inspired utterance altogether new to human thought, and straightway turned in resentment on the man from whom it came. He is an example of the bigot in the presence of genius, a little uncomfortable, a good deal affronted, very sure that he knows the mind of God, and very determined to have the last word. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees of our Lords time, most religious persons and zealous for what they considered sound doctrine. His light shone in darkness, and their darkness comprehended it not; they did Him to death with an accusation of impiety and blasphemy-“He made Himself the Son of God,” they said.
Zophars whole speech is a fresh example of the dogmatic hardness the writer was assailing, the closure of the mind and the stiffening of thought. One might not unjustly accuse this speaker of neglecting the moral difference between the profane whose triumph and joy he declares to be short, and the good man whose career is full of years and honour. We may almost say that to him outward success is the only mark of inward grace, and that prosperous hypocrisy would be mistaken by him for the most beautiful piety. His whole creed about providence and retribution is such that he is on the way to utter confusion of mind. Why, he has said to himself that Job is a wicked and false man-Job whose striking characteristic is outspoken truthfulness, whose integrity is the pride of his Divine Master. And if Zophar once accepts it as indisputable that Job is neither good nor sincere, what will the end be for himself? With more and more assurance he will judge from a mans prosperity that he is righteous, and from his afflictions that he is a reprobate. He will twist and torture facts of life and modes of thought, till the worship of property will become his real cult, and to him the poor will of necessity seem worthless. This is just what happened in Israel. It is just what slovenly interpretation of the Bible and providence has brought many to in our own time. Side by side with a doctrine of self-sacrifice incredible and mischievous, there is a doctrine of the earthly reward of godliness-religion profitable for the life that now is, in the way of filling the pockets and conducting to eminent seats-an absurd and hurtful doctrine, forever being taught in one form if not another, and applied all along the line of human life. An honest, virtuous man, is he sure to find a good place in our society? The rich broker or manufacturer, because he washes, dresses, and has twenty servants to wait upon him, is he therefore a fine soul? Nobody will say so. Yet Christianity is so little understood in some quarters, is so much associated with the error of Zophar, that within the church a score are of his opinion for one who is in Jobs perplexity. Outside, the proportion is much the same. The moral ideas and philanthropies of our generation are perverted by the notion that no one is succeeding as a man unless he is making money and rising in the social scale. So, independence of mind, freedom, integrity, and the courage by which they are secured, are made of comparatively little account.
It will be said that if things were rightly ordered, Christian ideas prevailing in business, in legislation and social intercourse, the best people would certainly be in the highest places and have the best of life, and that, meanwhile, the improvement of the world depends on some approximation to this state of affairs. That is to say, spiritual power and character must come into visible union with the resources of the earth and possession of its good things, otherwise there will be no moral progress. Divine providence, we are told, works after that manner; and the reasoning is plausible enough to require close attention. There has always been peril for religion in association with external power and prestige-and the peril of religion is the peril of progress. Will spiritual ideas ever urge those whose lives they rule to seek with any solicitude the gifts of time? Will they not, on the other hand, increasingly, as they ought, draw the desires of the best away from what is immediate, earthly, and in all the lower senses personal? To put it in a word, must not the man of spiritual mind always be a prophet, that is, a critic of human life in its relations to the present world? Will there come a time in the history of the race when the criticism of the prophet shall no longer be needed and his mantle will fall from him? That can only be when all the Lords people are prophets, when everywhere the earthly is counted as nothing in view of the heavenly, when men will seek continually a new revelation of good, and the criticism of Christ shall be so acknowledged that no one shall need to repeat after Him, “How can ye believe which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour: that cometh from God only?” By heavenly means alone shall heavenly ends be secured, and the keen pursuit of earthly good will never bring the race of men into the paradise where Christ reigns. Outward magnificence is neither a symbol nor an ally of spiritual power. It hinders instead of aiding the soul in the quest of what is eternally excellent, touching the sensuous, not the divine, in man. Christ is still, as in the days of His flesh, utterly indifferent to the means by which power and distinction are gained in the world. The spread of His ideas, the manifestation of His Godhead, the coming of His Kingdom, depend not the least on the countenance of the great and the impression produced on rude minds by the shows of wealth. The first task of His gospel everywhere is to correct the barbaric tastes of men; and the highest and best in a spiritual age will be, as He was, thinkers, seers of truth, lovers of God and man, lowly in heart and life. These will express the penetrating criticism that shall move the world.
Zophar discourses of one who is openly unjust and rapacious. He is candid enough to admit that, for a time, the schemes and daring of the wicked may succeed, but affirms that, though his head may “reach to the clouds,” it is only that he may be cast down.
Knowest thou not this from of old,
Since man was placed upon earth,
That the triumphing of the wicked is short,
And the joy of the godless but for a moment,
Though his excellency ascend to heaven,
And his head reach to the clouds,
Yet he shall perish forever like his own dung:
They who saw him shall say, Where is he?
Like a dream he shall flee, no more to be found,
Yea, he shall be chased away like a night vision.
As a certainty, based on facts quite evident since the beginning of human history, Zophar presents anew the overthrow of the evildoer. He is sure that the wicked does not keep his prosperity through a long life. Such a thing has never occurred in the range of human experience. The godless man is allowed, no doubt, to lift himself up for a time; but his day is short. Indeed he is great for a moment only, and that in appearance. He never actually possesses the good things of earth, but only seems to possess them. Then in the hour of judgment he passes like a dream and perishes forever. The affirmation is precisely that which has been made again and again; and with some curiosity we scan the words of Zophar to learn what addition he makes to the scheme so often pressed.
Sooth to say, there is no reasoning, nothing but affirmation. He discusses no doubtful case, enters into no careful discrimination of the virtuous who enjoy from the godless who perish, makes no attempt to explain the temporary success granted to the wicked. The man he describes is one who has acquired wealth by unlawful means, who conceals his wickedness, rolling it like a sweet morsel under his tongue. We are told further that he has oppressed and neglected the poor and violently taken away a house, and he has so behaved himself that all the miserable watch for his downfall with hungry eyes. But these charges, virtually of avarice, rapacity, and inhumanity, are far from definite, far from categorical. Not without reason would any man have so bad a reputation, and if deserved it would ensure the combination against him of all right-minded people. But men may be evil hearted and inhuman who are not rapacious; they may be vile and yet not given to avarice. And Zophars account of the ruin of the profane, though he makes it a Divine act, pictures the rising of society against one whose conduct is no longer endurable-a robber chief, the tyrant of a valley. His argument fails in this, that though the history of the proud evildoers destruction were perfectly true to fact, it would apply to a very few only amongst the population, -one in ten thousand, leaving the justice of Divine providence in greater doubt than ever, because the avarice and selfishness of smaller men are not shown to have corresponding punishment, are not indeed so much as considered. Zophar describes one whose bold and flagrant iniquity rouses the resentment of those not particularly honest themselves, not religious, nor even humane, but merely aware of their own danger from his violent rapacity. A man, however, may be avaricious who is not strong, may have the will to prey on others but not the power. The real distinction, therefore, of Zophars criminal is his success in doing what many of those he oppresses and despoils would do if they were able, and the picturesque passage leaves no deep moral impression. We read it and seem to feel that the overthrow of this evildoer is one of the rare and happy instances of poetical justice which sometimes occur in real life, but not so frequently as to make a man draw back in the act of oppressing a poor dependant or robbing a helpless widow.
In all sincerity Zophar speaks, with righteous indignation against the man whose rum he paints, persuades that he is following, step for step, the march of Divine judgment. His eye kindles, his voice rings with poetic exultation.
He hath swallowed down riches; he shall vomit them again:
God shall cast them out of his belly.
He shall suck the poison of asps;
The vipers tongue shall slay him.
He shall not look upon the rivers,
The flowing streams of honey and butter.
That which he toiled for shall he restore,
And shall not swallow it down;
Not according to the wealth he has gotten
Shall he have enjoyment,
There was nothing left that he devoured not;
Therefore his prosperity shall not abide.
In his richest abundance he shall be in straits;
The hand of every miserable one shall come upon him.
When he is about to fill his belly God shall cast the fury of His wrath upon him
And rain upon him his food.
He has succeeded for a time, concealing or fortifying himself among the mountains. He has store of silver and gold and garments taken by violence, of cattle and sheep captured in the plain. But the district is roused. Little by little he is driven back into the uninhabited desert. His supplies are cut off and he is brought to extremity. His food becomes to him as the gall of asps. With all his ill-gotten wealth he is in straits, for he is hunted from place to place. Not for him now the luxury of the green oasis and the coolness of flowing streams. He is an outlaw, in constant danger of discovery. His children wander to places where they are not known and beg for bread. Reduced to abject fear, he restores the goods he had taken by violence, trying to buy off the enmity of his pursuers. Then come the last skirmish, the clash of weapons, ignominious death.
He shall flee from the iron weapon,
And the bow of brass shall pierce him through.
He draweth it forth; it cometh out of his body:
Yea, the glittering shaft cometh out of his gall.
Terrors are upon him,
All darkness is laid up for his treasures;
A fire not blown shall consume him.
It shall devour him that is left in his tent.
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity,
And the earth shall rise against him.
The increase of his house shall depart,
Be washed away in the day of His wrath.
This is the lot of a wicked man from God,
And the heritage appointed to him by God.
Vain is resistance when he is brought to bay by his enemies. A moment of overwhelming terror, and he is gone. His tent blazes up and is consumed, as if the breath of God made hot the avenging flame. Within it his wife and children perish. Heaven seems to have called for his destruction and earth to have obeyed the summons. So the craft and strength of the freebooter, living on the flocks and harvests of industrious people, are measured vainly against the indignation of God, who has Ordained the doom of wickedness.
A powerful word picture. Yet if Zophar and the rest taught such a doctrine of retribution, and, put to it, could find no other; if they were in the way of saying, “This is the lot of a wicked man from God,” how far away must Divine judgment have seemed from ordinary life, from the falsehoods daily spoken, the hard words and blows dealt to the slave, the jealousies and selfishness of the harem. Under the pretext of showing the righteous Judge, Zophar makes it impossible, or next to impossible, to realise His presence and authority. Men must be stirred up on Gods behalf or His judicial anger will not be felt.
It is however when we apply the picture to the case of Job that we see its falsehood. Against the facts of his career Zophars account of Divine judgment stands out as flat heresy, a foul slander charged on the providence of God. For he means that Job wore in his own settlement the hypocritical dress of piety and benevolence and must have elsewhere made brigandage his trade, that his servants who died by the sword of Chaldaeans and Sabeans and the fire of heaven had been his army of rievers, that the cause of his ruin was heavens intolerance and earths detestation of so vile a life. Zophar describes poetic justice, and reasons back from it to Job. Now it becomes flagrant injustice against God and man. We cannot argue from what sometimes is to what must be. Although Zophar had taken in hand to convict one really and unmistakably a miscreant, truth alone would have served the cause of righteousness. But he assumes, conjectures, and is immeasurably unjust and cruel to his friend.