This [is] the portion of a wicked man with God
Not to be punished in this life, but after death. This is what
Job undertook to teach his friends, and is the purport of what
follows in this chapter. A wicked man is not only one that has
been so from the womb, and is openly and notoriously a wicked
man, but one also that is so secretly, under a mask of sobriety,
religion, and godliness, and is an hypocrite, for of such Job
speaks in the context; and the portion of such a man is not what
he has in this life, which is oftentimes a very affluent one as
to the things of this world, but what he has after death, which
is banishment from the presence of God, the everlasting portion
of his people, a part in the lake which burns with fire and
brimstone, the wrath of God to the uttermost, the second death,
and a dwelling with devils and wicked men, such as himself, even
a portion with hypocrites, which of all is the most dreadful and
miserable, ( Matthew
24:51 ) ; and this is "with God", is appointed by him; for
God has appointed the wicked, the vessels of wrath, fitted by
their sins for destruction to the day of evil, to everlasting
ruin and destruction; and it is prepared by him for them, as for
the devil and his angels, and for them it is reserved among his
treasures, even blackness of darkness, damnation, wrath, and
vengeance:
and the heritage of oppressors, [which] they shall receive
of the
Almighty;
these are such who are either oppressors of the poor in their
natural and civil rights, taking from or denying to them what of
right is their due; or oppressors of the saints in their
religious rights and privileges, furious persecutors of them; and
who, being powerful, are terrible, as the word signifies: there
is an "heritage", or an inheritance for those, which is entailed
upon them, and will descend unto them, as the firstborn of their
father the devil, as children of disobedience, and so of wrath,
and like an inheritance will endure: and this they "shall
receive"; it is future, it is wrath to come, and it is certain
there is no escaping it; it is their due desert, and they shall
receive it; it is in the hands of the almighty God, and he will
render it to them, and they shall most assuredly inherit it.
