Job 21:8-18

8 They live to see their children grow up and settle down, and they enjoy their grandchildren.
9 Their homes are safe from every fear, and God does not punish them.
10 Their bulls never fail to breed. Their cows bear calves and never miscarry.
11 They let their children frisk about like lambs. Their little ones skip and dance.
12 They sing with tambourine and harp. They celebrate to the sound of the flute.
13 They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to the grave in peace.
14 And yet they say to God, ‘Go away. We want no part of you and your ways.
15 Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him? What good will it do us to pray?’
16 (They think their prosperity is of their own doing, but I will have nothing to do with that kind of thinking.)
17 “Yet the light of the wicked never seems to be extinguished. Do they ever have trouble? Does God distribute sorrows to them in anger?
18 Are they driven before the wind like straw? Are they carried away by the storm like chaff? Not at all!

Job 21:8-18 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 1

Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.