Job 21:7-15

7 ¹Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

8 Their ²offspring are established in their presence, and their descendants before their eyes.

9 Their houses are ³safe from fear, and ⁴no rod of God is upon them.

10 Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves and ⁵does not miscarry.

11 They send out their ⁶little boys like a flock, and their children dance.

12 They sing to ⁷the tambourine and ⁸the lyre and rejoice to the sound of ⁹the pipe.

13 They ¹⁰spend their days in prosperity, and in ¹¹peace they go down to ¹²Sheol.

14 They say to God, ¹³'Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.

15 ¹⁴What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what ¹⁵profit do we get if we pray to him?'

Job 21:7-15 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.

Cross References

• 1. Job 12:6; Psalms 17:14; Psalms 37:1, 35; Psalms 73:3, 5; Psalms 92:7; Ecclesiastes 8:14; Jeremiah 12:1, 2; Habakkuk 1:13, 16; Malachi 3:14, 15
• 2. [Job 5:25]
• 3. [Job 5:24]
• 4. See Job 9:34
• 5. Exodus 23:26
• 6. [Psalms 17:14]
• 7. Exodus 15:20
• 8. Job 30:31; Genesis 4:21
• 9. Job 30:31; Genesis 4:21
• 10. Job 36:11
• 11. Job 34:20; [Job 24:19]
• 12. Job 7:9; Job 14:13; Job 17:13; See Psalms 16:10
• 13. Job 22:17
• 14. [Exodus 5:2]
• 15. See Job 34:9