Job 21:11-21

11 They send out their little ones like a flock, and their children dance around.

12 They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

13 They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol.

14 They say to God, "Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.

15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?'

16 Is not their prosperity indeed their own achievement? The plans of the wicked are repugnant to me.

17 "How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does calamity come upon them? How often does God distribute pains in his anger?

18 How often are they like straw before the wind, and like chaff that the storm carries away?

19 You say, "God stores up their iniquity for their children.' Let it be paid back to them, so that they may know it.

20 Let their own eyes see their destruction, and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

21 For what do they care for their household after them, when the number of their months is cut off?

Job 21:11-21 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Traditional rendering of Heb [Shaddai]
• [b]. Heb [in their hand]
• [c]. Heb [he]
• [d]. Traditional rendering of Heb [Shaddai]