Job 21:17-21

17 “Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does calamity come upon them, the fate God allots in his anger?
18 How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale?
19 It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of the wicked for their children.’ Let him repay the wicked, so that they themselves will experience it!
20 Let their own eyes see their destruction; let them drink the cup of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 For what do they care about the families they leave behind when their allotted months come to an end?

Job 21:17-21 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 21

This chapter contains Job's reply to Zophar's preceding discourse, in which, after a preface exciting attention to what he was about to say, Job 21:1-6; he describes by various instances the prosperity of wicked men, even of the most impious and atheistical, and which continues with them as long as they live, contrary to what Zophar had asserted in Job 20:5, Job 21:7-15; as for himself, he disapproved of such wicked men as much as any, and owns that destruction comes upon them sooner or later, and on their posterity also, Job 21:16-21; but as God is a God of knowledge, and needs no instruction from any, and is a sovereign Being, he deals with men in different ways; some die in great ease, and peace, and prosperity, and others in bitterness and distress, but both are alike brought to the dust, Job 21:22-26; and whereas he was aware of their censures of him, and their objections to what he had said, he allows that the wicked are reserved to the day of destruction, which is future, and in the mean while lie in the grave, where all must follow; yet they are not repaid or rewarded in this life, that remains to be done in another world, Job 21:27-33; and concludes, that their consolation with respect to him was vain, and falsehood was in their answers, Job 21:34.

Cross References 15

  • 1. S Job 18:5
  • 2. Job 18:12
  • 3. S Job 20:22,28
  • 4. S Job 13:25; Psalms 1:4
  • 5. S Genesis 19:15
  • 6. S Job 7:10; Proverbs 10:25
  • 7. S Genesis 7:23
  • 8. Exodus 20:5; Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2; John 9:2
  • 9. Jeremiah 25:14; Jeremiah 50:29; Jeremiah 51:6,24,56
  • 10. S Exodus 32:33; Numbers 16:22; S 2 Kings 14:6; Jeremiah 42:16
  • 11. Job 6:4; Psalms 75:8; Isaiah 51:17
  • 12. S Job 20:28; Jeremiah 25:15; Revelation 14:10
  • 13. Job 14:22
  • 14. S Job 14:5
  • 15. S Job 14:21; Ecclesiastes 9:5-6
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