Job21chapter 21

Job stops arguing about himself and starts producing evidence. He asks the friends to look at the wicked men they all know: they live, grow old, and are mighty in power; their descendants are established in their sight; their houses are safe from fear; the rod of God is not on them.

The details of that prosperity are agricultural and domestic, and every one of them is a marker of blessing in that world. Their bull breeds and does not fail and their cow calves without miscarrying — herd fertility was the single clearest measure of a man's standing. Their children go out like a flock and dance. They take the timbrel and harp and rejoice at the sound of the pipe — the hand-drum, lyre, and reed pipe of village celebration.

Then the hardest observation: they spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. No long decline, no ruin, no reckoning. Job's summary of their theology is blunt — they say to God, depart from us, we do not desire the knowledge of thy ways.

He finishes with the funeral, because in that culture the funeral was the verdict. The wicked man is brought to the grave and 'shall remain in the tomb'; watch is kept over his mound; the clods of the valley are sweet to him, and every man follows in the procession as innumerable others went before. A well-attended burial and an honoured tomb were the last proof that a life had been blessed — and Job points out that the wicked get that too.