Job 21:14-24

14 They say to God, 'Leave us alone! We don't want to know your ways.

15 Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?'

16 The success of the wicked is not their own doing. Their way of thinking is different from mine.

17 Yet how often are the lamps of evil people turned off? How often does trouble come to them?

18 How often are they like straw in the wind or like chaff that is blown away by a storm?

19 It is said, 'God saves up a person's punishment for his children.' But God should punish the wicked themselves so they will know it.

20 Their eyes should see their own destruction, and they should suffer the anger of the Almighty.

21 They do not care about the families they leave behind when their lives have come to an end.

22 "No one can teach knowledge to God; he is the one who judges even the most important people.

23 One person dies while he still has all his strength, feeling completely safe and comfortable.

24 His body was well fed, and his bones were strong and healthy.

Job 21:14-24 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.