Job 18:12-21

12 Hunger depletes their strength, and calamity waits for them to stumble.

13 Disease eats their skin; death devours their limbs.

14 They are torn from the security of their homes and are brought down to the king of terrors.

15 The homes of the wicked will burn down; burning sulfur rains on their houses.

16 Their roots will dry up, and their branches will wither.

17 All memory of their existence will fade from the earth; no one will remember their names.

18 They will be thrust from light into darkness, driven from the world.

19 They will have neither children nor grandchildren, nor any survivor in the place where they lived.

20 People in the west are appalled at their fate; people in the east are horrified.

21 They will say, ‘This was the home of a wicked person, the place of one who rejected God.’”

Job 18:12-21 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JOB 18

In this chapter is Bildad's second reply to Job, in which he falls with great fury upon him, very sharply inveighs against him, and very highly charges him; the charges he brings against him are talkativeness and inattention to what was said to him, Job 18:1,2; contempt of his friends, impatience under his affliction, and pride and arrogance, as if the whole world, the course of nature and providence, and God himself all must give way to him, Job 18:3,4; nevertheless, he is assured of the miserable state of a wicked man, sooner or later, which is described by the extinction of his light of prosperity, Job 18:5,6; by the defeat of his counsels, being ensnared in a net laid for him, Job 18:7-10; by the terrible judgments of the sword, famine, and pestilence, by one or the other of which he is brought to death, the king of terrors, Job 18:11-14; by the destruction of his habitation and of his posterity, so that he has none to hear his name, or perpetuate his memory, Job 18:15-17; by his being driven out of the world, leaving no issue behind him, to the astonishment of all that knew him, Job 18:18-20; and the chapter is closed with this observation, that this is the common case of wicked and irreligious persons, Job 18:21.