Job 21:16-26

16 Isn't their prosperity already theirs? The plans of the wicked are far from me.

17 "How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their calamity come upon them? How often does [God] deal out pain in his anger,

18 to make them like straw in the wind, like chaff carried off by a storm?

19 God lays up for their children [the punishment for their] iniquity. He should lay it on [the wicked] themselves, so that they can feel it!

20 Let their own eyes see their own destruction and themselves drink the wrath of Shaddai.

21 What joy can they have in their family after them, given that their months are numbered?

22 "Can anyone teach God knowledge? After all, he judges those who are on high.

23 One person dies in his full strength, completely at ease and content;

24 his pails are full of milk, and the marrow in his bones is moist.

25 Another dies with embittered heart, never having tasted happiness.

26 They lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them both.

Job 21:16-26 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.