Job 20:8

8 Like a dream they will fly away. They will never be seen again. They will be driven away like visions in the night.

Job 20:8 Meaning and Commentary

Job 20:8

He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found
Either as a dream which is forgotten, as Nebuchadnezzar's was, and cannot be recovered; or as the matter and substance of a dream, which, though remembered, is a mere illusion; as when a hungry or thirsty man dreams he eats or drinks, but, awaking, finds himself empty, and not at all refreshed; what he fancied is fled and gone ^F13, and indeed never had any existence but in his imagination, ( Isaiah 29:8 ) ;

yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night;
either the same as a nocturnal dream, or what a man fancies he sees in his dream; or like a mere spectre or apparition, which is a mere phantom, and, when followed and pursued, vanishes and disappears; so such a man before described is chased out of the world, and is seen in it no more, see ( Job 18:18 ) ; the first clause, according to Sephorno, refers to the generation of the flood, and the second to the slaying of the firstborn of Egypt in the night.

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FOOTNOTES:

F13 (skiav onar anyrwpoi) , Pindar. Pythia, Ode 8.

Job 20:8 In-Context

6 Their pride might reach all the way up to the heavens. Their heads might touch the clouds.

7 But they will disappear forever, like the waste from their own bodies. Anyone who has seen them will say, 'Where did they go?'

8 Like a dream they will fly away. They will never be seen again. They will be driven away like visions in the night.

9 The eyes that saw them won't see them anymore. Even their own families won't remember them.

10 Their children must pay back what they took from poor people. Their own hands must give back the wealth they stole.