Jobchapter 21
34 verses · KJVJob book hub →
Key verse
But Job answered and said,
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 16.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Job answers Zophar by looking at the world instead of the theory. Suffer me, and I also will speak. Then mock on. 'Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, wax mighty in power?' (21:7). Their houses are safe from fear, their children dance, they take the timbrel and harp; 'they spend their days in prosperity, and in a moment they go down to Sheol': the very men who say to God, Depart from us. How often is the lamp of the wicked actually put out? One dies in full strength, another in bitterness of soul, and they lie down alike in the dust. Your answers, he tells them, leave only falsehood.
Context
Poetry · Unknown · Job overview
Where the chapter sits
Job 21 falls in Dialogue: three cycles (chapters 3–27). Job's opening complaint (3); three rounds with Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar; the friends' rigid retribution theology; the third cycle breaks: Zophar does not speak again. The dialogue exhausts itself as argument.
Before it: Prose prologue: heavenly court, chapters 1–2. After it: Hymn to wisdom, chapters 28.
The whole shape of Job→The world behind this chapter
Job 21The history
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 rest of the history, and what it meant to 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.
What it meant to them
This chapter is the book's appeal to plain observation, and it settles the second cycle. The friends' rule does not survive contact with the world any competent farmer could see out his own door.
For first hearers the value was permission to notice. Faith does not require pretending that the accounts balance in this life. It requires trusting the judge who has not finished.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews & Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
A. Job: Wherefore Do the Wicked Live and Grow Mighty?
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.But Job answered and said: Job asks for one thing the friends have not given him, an actual hearing, let this be your consolations, in place of the reproach chapter 19 already named. He grants them leave to keep mocking once he has finished, and after that I have spoken, mock on, which Henry reads as Job expecting no better treatment than he has already received. Gill notes the request itself is modest, only that they hear him out before answering, a courtesy chapter 2:13's silence once offered and chapter 19's reproaches have since withdrawn.
Job 21:1, 3 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Job 21:1
“But Job answered and said. In reply to what Zophar had asserted, concerning the prosperity of the wicked being only for a short time, Job 20:5; the contrary to which he most clearly proves, and that in many instances their prosperity continues as long as they live; that they die in it, and it is enjoyed by their posterity after them.”
Job 21:1
“What is it that Job here asserts? Two things:-- (1.) That impenitent sinners will certainly be punished in the other world, and, usually, their punishment is put off until then. (2.) That therefore we are not to think it strange if they prosper greatly in this world and fall under no visible token of God's wrath.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:1
“He owns that God does sometimes hang up a wicked man as it were in chains, in terrorem --as a terror to others, by some visible remarkable judgment in this life, but denies that he always does so; nay, he maintains that commonly he does otherwise, suffering even the worst of sinners to live all their days in prosperity and to go out of the world without any visible mark of his wrath upon them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:2, 2 voices
Job 21:2
“Let this be your consolations - ותהי זאת תנחומתיכם uthehi zoth tanchumotheychem may be translated, “And let this be your retractations.” Let what I am about to say induce you to retract what you have said, and to recall your false judgments. נחם nacham signifies, not only to comfort, but to change one’s mind, to repent; hence the Vulgate translates et agite paenitentiam, “and repent,” which Coverdale follows in his version, and amende yourselves. Some suppose the verse to be understood ironically: I am now about to give you consolations for those you have given me.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:2
"After I have spoken you may go on with what you have to say, and I will not hinder you, no, though you go on to mock me." Those that engage in controversy must reckon upon having hard words given them, and resolve to bear reproach patiently; for, generally, those that mock will mock on, whatever is said to them.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:3, 1 voice
Job 21:3
“Suffer me that I may speak - Allow me to speak without interruption, or bear with me while I freely express my sentiments - it is all that I now ask. And after that I have spoken, mock on - Resume your reproaches, if you will, when I am done. I ask only the privilege of expressing my thoughts on a very important point, and when that is done, I will allow you to resume your remarks as you have done before, and you may utter your sentiments without interruption.”
2. (vv. 4-6)
a.is my complaint to man?: Job clarifies whom he is actually addressing: is my complaint to man, and if it were, his impatience would need no excuse, but it is not, so the friends' answers have been aimed at the wrong target from the start. Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth asks of them the silence they owed him before they spoke, the same gesture their own first visit gave and then abandoned. Barnes reads even when I remember I am afraid as Job admitting the argument he is about to make troubles him as much as it will trouble them, a case he states because it is true and not because it is comfortable.
Job 21:4, 2 voices
Job 21:4
“As for me - האנכי heanochi, “Alas for me!” Is it not with a man that I speak? And, if this be the case, why should not my spirit be troubled? I do not reply against my Maker: I suffer much from God and man; why then may I not have the privilege of complaining to creatures like myself?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:4
Job's difficulty was not as to man, but as to God, why He so afflicted him, as if he were the guilty hypocrite which the friends alleged him to be. Vulgate translates it, "my disputation." if it were--rather, "since this is the case."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:5, 2 voices
Job 21:5
“Mark me - Margin, “look unto.” Literally, “Look upon me. That is, attentively look on me, on my sufferings, on my disease, and my losses. See if I am a proper object of repreach and mockery - see if I have not abundant reason to be in deep distress when God has afflicted me in a manner so unusual and mysterious. And be astonished - Silent astonishment should be evinced instead of censure.”
Job 21:5
"It is true," says Job, "remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always; for we have many instances of the great and long prosperity of those that are openly and avowedly wicked; though they are hardened in their wickedness by their prosperity, yet they are still suffered to prosper." I.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:6, 2 voices
Job 21:6
“Ver. 6. Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold of my flesh. 44. That blessed Job was not forgetful of his deeds, the last utterance of his lips proves. Wherefore this which he now says to his friends, Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold of my flesh, must clearly be said in mockery. As if it were in plain words; 'If I remember that I have had any thing of the hypocrite in me, directly I tremble in tears of penitence.'”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:6
“Can you wonder that I broke out into complaints, when the struggle was not with men, but with the Almighty? Reconcile, if you can, the ceaseless woes of the innocent with the divine justice! Is it not enough to make one tremble? [UMBREIT].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.Wherefore do the wicked live: Job sets plain observation against the doctrine Zophar has just finished stating, that the wicked man's triumph is short: wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them answers Zophar's whole catalogue of hidden ruin point for point, with the claim that no such rod falls at all in the ordinary run of things. Delitzsch reads this as the chapter's real weight, that Job argues from what is seen rather than from a theory of what must be, which is the shift the friends have no ready answer for.
Job 21:7, 2 voices
Job 21:7
“Wherefore do the wicked live? - Job comes now to the main design of his argument in this chapter, to show that it is a fact, that the wicked often have great prosperity; that they are not treated in this life according to their character; and that it is not a fact that men of eminent wickedness, as his friends maintained, would meet, in this life, with proportionate sufferings.”
Job 21:7
“Ro 9:22. old--in opposition to the friends who asserted that sinners are "cut off" early (Job 8:12, 14).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:8, 2 voices
Job 21:8
“Ver. 8. Their seed is established in their sight with them. 46. For the increase of exceeding happiness, together with a large patrimony, they have heirs too given them; and that no unavoidable temporal circumstance either may remove from their eyes those in whom their soul delights, it is said of this seed of theirs, Their seed is established in their sight. But what if children are vouchsafed, yet the children themselves stricken with barrenness? The family is made extinct in them, in like sort as it was feared it would be made extinct by the barrenness of their parents.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:8
“Their seed is established - They see their own children grow up, and become settled in the land; and behold their children’s children also; so that their generations are not cut off. Even the posterity of the wicked continue.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:9, 2 voices
Job 21:9
“Ver. 9. Their houses are secure and at peace, neither is the rod of God upon them. 47. Their 'houses are secure and at peace,' in that they live on committing sin, they do things to be mourned over, and they never leave their joys. And the 'rod' of discipline from Above 'does not smite them,' and they go on the more unrestrainedly in sin, in proportion as they are punished less for sin. But as we have heard the things, which go prosperously within, what prosperity smiles on them in the field too, let us see.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:9
“Their houses are safe from fear - Margin, “peace from.” The friends of Job had maintained just the contrary; see Job 20:27-28; Job 15:21-24. Their idea was, that the wicked man would never be free from alarms. Job says, that they lived in security and peace, and that their houses are preserved from the intrusions of evil-minded people. Neither is the rod of God upon them - The “rod” is an emblem of punishment. The idea is, that they were free from the chastisements which their sins deserved.”
4. (vv. 10-11)
a.Their bull gendereth: The picture turns to increase without loss, the bull that does not fail and the cow that calves without miscarrying, ordinary marks of a prospering household in flocks and herds. Their little ones go out like a flock and their children dance, a scene of family abundance Job names without envy, only as the plain fact his friends' doctrine cannot account for. Gill reads the verses as chosen precisely because they mirror the blessings of chapter 1's opening picture of Job's own house, now enjoyed by men his friends call wicked.
Job 21:10, 2 voices
Job 21:10
“Ver. 10. Their ox conceiveth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and loseth not her calf. It is the usage of common talk to call 'ox' masculine, and 'cow' feminine, but literary phraseology designates 'ox' of the common gender. Hence it is now said, Their ox conceiveth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and loseth not her calf.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:10
“Their bull gendereth - עבר ibbar, passes over, i.e., on the cow, referring to the actions of the bull when coupling with the female. Their flocks multiply greatly, they bring forth in time, and none of them is barren.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:11, 3 voices
Job 21:11
"And their children play before them, taking up the psaltery and harp." Our children take up the psaltery and the harp, praising and glorifying God. But "their [the heretics'] children," who are foolish in themselves, also "play taking up the psaltery and the harp." Every time they usurp the words of the Old Testament, they play and mock the oracles of the Law and the Prophets. By taking up the harmonies that were once the psaltery of the law and the prophetic harp, they play with them.
Origen of Alexandria· written before 253· FRAGMENTS ON JOB 15.25patristic
Job 21:11
“They send forth their little ones - Their numerous and happy children they send forth to plays and pastimes. Like a flock - In great numbers. This is an exquisitely beautiful image of prosperity. What can be more so than a group of happy children around a man’s dwelling? And their children dance - Dance for joy. They are playful and sportive, like the lambs of the flock.”
Job 21:11
“Here is none of that care taken of their children which Abraham took of his, to teach them the way of the Lord, Gen. xviii. Their children do not pray, or say their catechism, but dance, and sing, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. Sensual pleasures are all the delights of carnal people, and as men are themselves so they breed their children.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
5. (vv. 12-13)
a.the timbrel and harp: The household's prosperity turns to festivity, the timbrel and harp and the sound of the organ marking days spent in wealth rather than labor. The death that ends it is not the lingering catastrophe the friends have promised but a moment, in a moment go down to the grave, and Barnes notes this is the detail that most directly contradicts Zophar's picture of terror overtaking the wicked at his table. Ease in life and suddenness in death together are the observation Job asks the friends to explain.
Job 21:12, 2 voices
Job 21:12
“Ver. 12. They take the timbrel, and harp, and rejoice at the noise of the organ. As if he said in plain speech; 'Whilst the masters swell with honours and substance, the dependants rejoice in festive sports.' But, O blessed man, wherefore dost thou tell us all these many things of the delights of the wicked? It is now a long time that thou runnest on in the description of them; after much said, in one word point out what thou thinkest.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:12
“They take the timbrel and harp - ישאו yisu, they rise up or lift themselves up, probably alluding to the rural exercise of dancing. תף toph, which we translate timbrel, means a sort of drum, such as the tom-tom of the Asiatics. כנור kinnor may mean something of the harp kind. עוגב ugab, organ, means nothing like the instrument now called the organ, though thus translated both by the Septuagint and Vulgate; it probably means the syrinx, composed of several unequal pipes, close at the bottom, which when blown into at the top, gives a very shrill and lively sound.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:13, 2 voices
Job 21:13
They spend their days in wealth,.... Or "in good" (p); not in the performance of good works, or in the exercise of that which is spiritually good; or in seeking after spiritual good things, or eternal happiness; but in earthly good, in the enjoyment of the temporal good things of this life, and which to enjoy in a moderate and becoming manner is not criminal, but commendable; but these men, and such as they, seek no other good but worldly good; their language is, "who will show us any good?"
Job 21:13
“They spend their days in wealth - Margin, or, “mirth.” Literally, “they wear out their days in good” - בטוב baṭôb. Vulgate “in bonis.” Septuagint, ἐν ἀγαθοῖς en agathois - “in good things;” in the enjoyment of good. They are not oppressed with the evils of poverty and want, but they have abundance of “the good things” of life. And in a moment go down to the grave - Hebrew to שׁאול she'ôl - but here meaning evidently the grave.”
6. (vv. 14-16)
a.Depart from us: Job quotes the wicked man's own words, therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, the same sentence Eliphaz will use of the old way of wicked men at 22:17, so both men name the identical defiance from opposite ends of the argument. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him states the calculation plainly, service weighed only for its profit, and Job answers it himself by refusing the logic even as he reports it, the counsel of the wicked is far from me. Delitzsch reads this disclaimer as necessary: Job describes what he sees without endorsing it, holding observation and conviction apart.
Job 21:14, 2 voices
Job 21:14
“Therefore--rather, "And yet they are such as say," &c., that is, say, not in so many words, but virtually, by their conduct (so the Gergesenes, Mt 8:34).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:14
“Or, (2.) To lessen the difficulty. God suffers them to prosper; but let us not wonder at it, for the prosperity of fools destroys them, by hardening them in sin, Prov. i. See how light these prospering sinners make of God and religion, as if because they have so much of this world they had no need to look after another.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:15, 2 voices
Job 21:15
“Ver. 15. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him? 52. For the mind of man being miserably discharged without, is so dissipated in things corporeal, as neither to return to itself within, nor to be able to think of Him, Who is invisible. Thus carnal men setting at nought spiritual commands, because they do not see God with bodily sight, one time or another come to this pass, that they even imagine Him not to be. Hence it is written, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:15
“What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? - compare for similar expressions, Exo 5:2; Pro 30:9. The meaning here is, “What claim has the Almighty, or who is he, that we should be bound to obey and worship him? What authority has he over us? Why should we yield our will to his, and why submit to his claims?” This is the language of the human heart everywhere. Man seeks to deny the authority of God over him, and to feel that he has no claim to his service. He desires to be independent.”
Job 21:16, 3 voices
Job 21:16
“Ver. 16. But because their good things are not in their hand, may their counsel be far from me. 54. He 'holds his good things in his hand,' who in despising temporal things, forces them under the dominion of the mind. For whoever loves them over much, subjects himself more to them, than them to himself.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:16
“Their good is not in their hand - With all their boasting and self-dependence, God only lends them his bounty; and though it appears to be their own, yet it is at his disposal. Some of the wicked he permits to live and die in affluence, provided it be acquired in the ordinary way of his providence, by trade, commerce, etc. Others he permits to possess it for a while only, and then strips them of their illegally procured property.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:16
“Lo - But wicked men have no reason to reject God, because of their prosperity, for their wealth, is not in their hand; neither obtained, nor kept by their own might, but only by God's power and favour.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
B. Job: One Dieth in Full Strength, Another in Bitterness of Soul
1. (vv. 17-18)
a.candle of the wicked put out!: Job turns the friends' own image against its use as a fixed law: how oft is the candle of the wicked put out, a question whose form concedes it happens while denying it happens as a rule. God distributeth sorrows in his anger allows real judgment without granting it falls on every occasion the friends require, and the stubble and chaff of the storm remain a picture of what sometimes occurs rather than what always must. Clarke notes the how oft as the hinge of the whole speech, turning a supposed universal into an exception.
Job 21:17, 3 voices
Job 21:17
“Ver. 17. How often shall their candle be put out? and how oft shall a flood come over them, and shall He divide sorrows in His fury? 55. It often happens that the wicked man reckons the life of his children as a 'candle,' but when the son, that is loved overmuch, is taken away, what seemed the 'light' of the wicked is 'put out.'”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:17
“How oft is the candle of the wicked put out? - Margin, “lamp.” A light, or a lamp, was an image of prosperity. There is, probably, an allusion here to what had been maintained by Bildad, Job 18:5-6, that the light of the wicked would be extinguished, and their dwellings made dark; see the notes at those verses. Job replies to this by asking how often it occurred. He inquires whether it was a frequent thing. By this, he implies that it was not universal; that it was a less frequent occurrence than they supposed.”
Job 21:17
“Job in this whole passage down to Job 21:21 quotes the assertion of the friends, as to the short continuance of the sinner's prosperity, not his own sentiments.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:18, 3 voices
Job 21:18
“Ver. 18. They shall be as chaff before the wind, and as ashes that the storm scattereth. 56. When the wicked man is seen in power, when he is utterly without check or restraint in his acts of oppression and violence, by the imaginations of the weak he is accounted too well ballasted, and as rooted in this world.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:18
“They are as stubble before the wind - “His fan is in his hand; he will thoroughly cleanse his floor, and the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, but shall be like the chaff which the wind driveth away.” Were not this a common thought, I should have supposed that the author of this book borrowed it from Psa 1:”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:18
“They are light and worthless, and of no account either with God or with wise and good men. They are fitted to destruction, and continually lie exposed to it, and in the height of their pomp and power there is but a step between them and ruin.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 19-21)
a.layeth up his iniquity for his children: Job states the friends' fallback position, that punishment delayed to the children still counts as justice done, God layeth up his iniquity for his children, and answers it directly: he rewardeth him, and he shall know it, insisting the guilty man himself must feel it to have been dealt with at all. What pleasure hath he in his house after him presses the same point from the other side, since a man already dead has no interest left in what happens to his sons. Henry reads this as Job's sharpest logical move in the chapter, that justice postponed past the offender's own life leaves the offender himself unanswered.
Job 21:19, 3 voices
Job 21:19
“Ver. 19. God shall lay up for his children the grief of their father. And when He repayeth, then he shall know it. 57. We know that it is written; Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children unto the third and fourth generation. [Ex. 34, 7] And again it is written, What mean ye that ye make this a proverb among you concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:19
“God layeth up his iniquity for his children - Margin, that is, “the punishment of iniquity.” This is a reference evidently to the opinion which “they” had maintained. It may be rendered, “You say that God layeth up iniquity,” etc. They had affirmed that not only did God, as a great law, punish the wicked in this life, but that the consequences of their sins passed over to their posterity; or, if “they” were not punished, yet the calamity would certainly come on their descendants; see Job 18:19-20; Job 20:10, Job 20:”
Job 21:19
“Equally questionable is the friends' assertion that if the godless himself is not punished, the children are (Job 18:19; 20:10); and that God rewardeth him here for his iniquity, and that he shall know it to his cost.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:20, 2 voices
Job 21:20
“His eyes shall see his destruction - He shall perceive its approach, and have the double punishment of fearing and feeling; feeling a Thousand deaths in fearing One. He shall drink of the wrath - The cup of God’s wrath, the cup of trembling, etc., is frequently expressed or referred to in the sacred writings, Deu 32:33; Isa 51:17-22; Jer 25:15; Rev 14:8. It appears to be a metaphor taken from those cups of poison which certain criminals were obliged to drink.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:20
“The eyes that have been wilfully shut against the grace of God shall be opened to see his destruction. He shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty; that shall be the portion of his cup. The misery of damned sinners is here set forth in a few words, but very terrible ones.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:21, 3 voices
Job 21:21
“For what pleasure hath he ... - That is, what happiness shall he have in his family? This, it seems to me, is designed to be a reference to their sentiments, or a statement by Job of what “they” maintained. They held, that a man who was wicked, could have none of the comfort which he anticipated in his children, for he would himself be cut off in the midst of life, and taken away.”
Job 21:21
“It is therefore necessary that "his eyes should see his and their destruction" (see Job 14:21). cut off--rather, when the number of his allotted months is fulfilled (Job 14:5). From an Arabic word, "arrow," which was used to draw lots with.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:21
“Our Saviour has let us know how little pleasure the rich man in hell had in his house after him, when the remembrance of the good things he had received in his life-time would not cool his tongue, but added much to his misery, as did also the sorrow he was in lest his five brethren, whom he left in his house after him, should follow him to that place of torment, Luke xvi.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (v. 22)
a.Shall any teach God knowledge?: The single verse guards the whole argument from becoming its own arrogance: shall any teach God knowledge, seeing he judgeth those that are high, checks Job from claiming he could correct the divine government even as he insists its visible pattern does not match the friends' theory. Davidson reads it as Job's own limit set on himself, a reminder inside the rebuttal that describing what happens is not the same as prescribing what must. The verse keeps Job's empiricism from sliding into a claim to sit in judgment on God, which he never makes.
Job 21:22, 3 voices
Job 21:22
“Ver. 22. Shall any teach God knowledge? seeing that He judgeth those that are high. 61. When in the things, which are done concerning us, we have doubts, we ought to look at others, which are well known to us, and to pacify that murmuring of the thought, which had arisen to us in consequence of our uncertainty. For see, whereas scourges recover the Elect to life, and not even scourges keep the wicked from bad deeds, Almighty God's judgments upon us are very secret and are not unjust.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:22
“Shall any teach God knowledge? - Who among the sons of men can pretend to teach God how to govern the world, who himself teaches those that are high - the heavenly inhabitants, that excel us infinitely both in knowledge and wisdom? Neither angels nor men can comprehend the reasons of the Divine providence. It is a depth known only to God.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:22
“Teach - How to govern the world? For so you do, while you tell him that he must not afflict the godly, nor give the wicked prosperity. That he must invariably punish the wicked, and reward the righteous in this world.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
4. (vv. 23-24)
a.dieth in his full strength: One man dies at the height of his powers, being wholly at ease and quiet, his bones moistened with marrow, a death with none of the wasting the friends' doctrine would predict for a guilty life. Gill reads the marrow and milk as figures of a body still full of vigor at the moment of death, the opposite of the slow ruin Bildad and Zophar have both described. Nothing in the portrait names this man righteous or wicked; Job's point is only that this death occurs and must be accounted for.
Job 21:23, 2 voices
Job 21:23
“Ver. 23-25. One dieth in his full strength, being rich and prosperous. His inwards are full of fatness, and his bowels are moistened with marrow. And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and hath never any wealth. 62. These things being so, who may investigate the secrets of Almighty God, to find out wherefore He permits them so to be? Now to the Elect and the Lost, their life indeed is unlike, but the corruption of the flesh in death is no way unlike.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:23
“One dieth in his full strength - Margin, “very perfection,” or, “in the strength of his perfection.” The meaning is, that he dies in the very prime and vigor of life, surrounded with everything that can contribute to comfort. Of the truth of this position, no one can doubt; and the wonder is, that the friends of Job had not seen or admitted it. Being wholly at ease and quiet - That is, having everything to make them happy, so far as external circumstances are concerned.”
Job 21:24, 1 voice
Job 21:24
“His breasts are full of milk - The word עטיניו atinaiv, which occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, is most likely an Arabic term, but probably so provincial as to be now lost. (Arabic) atana signifies to macerate hides so as to take off the hair: hence Mr. Good thinks it means here, that sleekness of skin which is the effect of fatness both in man and beast. But as the radical idea signifies to stink, as leather does which is thus macerated, I cannot see how this meaning can apply here.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
5. (vv. 25-26)
a.bitterness of his soul: Job sets a second death beside the first, another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure, a life of want ending where the first man's ease also ended. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them, states the leveling flatly: the grave receives both men without regard to the visible shape of their lives. JFB reads the pairing as Job's closing evidence that outward circumstance, whether ease or bitterness, tracks no reliable moral pattern the friends can read.
Job 21:25, 1 voice
Job 21:25
“Another - Another wicked man. So there is a great variety of God's dispensations; he distributes great prosperity to one, and great afflictions to another, according to his wise but secret counsel.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Job 21:26, 3 voices
Job 21:26
“Ver. 26. And yet they shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them. What wonder then if those persons for a moment run a course unlike in the prosperity and adversity of this world, who through the corruption of the flesh return alike to the earth? So that life alone is to be thought on, wherein together with the resurrection of the flesh there is the arrival at an unlike end of recompensing.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:26
“They shall lie down alike in the dust - Death levels all distinctions, and the grave makes all equal. There may be a difference in the grave itself; but the human corpse is the same in all. Splendid monuments enshrine corruption; but the sod must lie close and heavy upon the putrefying carcass, to prevent it from becoming the bane of the living.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:26
“Alike - All these worldly differences are ended by death, and they lie in the grave without any distinction. So that no man can tell who is good, and who is bad by events which befall them in this life.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
6. (vv. 27-28)
a.I know your thoughts: Job names what he believes stands behind the friends' whole approach, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me, an unspoken syllogism he then quotes in their own likely words, where is the house of the prince, and where are the dwelling places of the wicked. Henry reads this as Job accusing them of reading his ruined estate as evidence and reasoning backward to guilt, precisely the logic the reader knows from chapters 1 and 2 to be false. The charge is aimed at their method, not merely their conclusion.
Job 21:27, 2 voices
Job 21:27
“Ver. 27, 28. Behold I know your thoughts, and the devices that ye wrongfully imagine against me. For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? and where are the dwellings of the wicked? 63. For they had imagined him a wicked man, whom they saw, his substance gone, in a temporal way ruined. But the holy man judges them with a lofty review in proportion as amidst the losses which he had met with, he was standing with undiminished uprightness.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:27
“Behold, I know your thoughts - That is, “I see that you are not satisfied, and that you are disposed still to maintain your former position. You will be ready to ask, Where “are” the proofs of the prosperity of the wicked? Where “are” the palaces of the mighty? Where “are” the dwelling places of ungodly men!” And the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me - The course of sophistical argument which you pursue, the tendency and design of which is to prove that I am a wicked man.”
Job 21:28, 1 voice
Job 21:28
“For ye say, Where is the house of the prince? - In order to prove your point, ye ask, Where is the house of the tyrant and oppressor? Are they not overthrown and destroyed? And is not this a proof that God does not permit the wicked to enjoy prosperity?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
7. (vv. 29-31)
a.asked them that go by the way?: Job appeals past his three friends to a wider witness, have ye not asked them that go by the way, ordinary travelers whose testimony he sets against a closed theological circle. Their tokens agree that the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction, brought forth to the day of wrath, a future reckoning rather than the present exposure the friends have insisted on. Who shall declare his way to his face, and who shall repay him what he hath done presses the point that no one living actually confronts such a man with his guilt while he lives.
Job 21:29, 2 voices
Job 21:29
“Have ye not asked them that go by the way? - Travelers, who have passed into other countries, and who have had an opportunity of making observations, and of learning the opinions of those residing there. The idea of Job is, that they might have learned from such travelers that such people were “reserved” for future destruction, and that calamity did not immediately overtake them. Information was obtained in ancient times by careful observation, and by traveling, and they who had gone into other countries would be highly regarded concerning point like this.”
Job 21:29
“Job, seeing that the friends will not admit him as an impartial judge, as they consider his calamities prove his guilt, begs them to ask the opinion of travellers (La 1:12), who have the experience drawn from observation, and who are no way connected with him.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:30, 2 voices
Job 21:30
“That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? - Though every one can tell that he has seen the wicked in prosperity, and even spend a long life in it; yet this is no proof that God loves him, or that he shall enjoy a prosperous lot in the next world. There, he shall meet with the day of wrath. There, the wicked shall be punished, and the just rewarded.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:30
“Their testimony (referring perhaps to those who had visited the region where Abraham who enjoyed a revelation then lived) is that "the wicked is (now) spared (reserved) against the day of destruction (hereafter)." The Hebrew does not so well agree with [UMBREIT] "in the day of destruction." Job does not deny sinners' future punishment, but their punishment in this life.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:31, 3 voices
Job 21:31
“Ver. 31. Who shall reprove his way to his face? and who shall repay him what he hath done? 69. Often that wrath of God, which the wicked man is to suffer for ever, even while placed in this life too he is made to experience, whilst he loses the good fortune that he loves, and meets with the adversity that he dreads.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:31
“Who shall declare his way to his face? - That is, the face of the wicked. Who shall dare to rise up and openly charge him with his guilt? The idea is, that none would dare to do it, and that, therefore, the wicked man was not punished according to his character here, and was reserved to a day of future wrath. And who shall repay him what he hath done? - The meaning is, that many wicked people lived without being punished for their sins.”
Job 21:31
“Those are marked for destruction that are let alone in sin, Hos. iv. And, if none dares declare his way to his face, much less dare any repay him what he has done and make him refund what he has obtained by injustice. He is one of those great flies which break through the cobwebs of the law, that hold only the little ones.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
8. (vv. 32-34)
a.brought to the grave: Job closes with the picture that most offends the friends' expectation, a wicked man brought to the grave with honor, the clods of the valley sweet unto him, and a great procession following after, as there are innumerable before him. How then comfort ye me in vain turns the whole speech into a verdict on their counsel, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood, the sharpest word Job has yet used against them. Watson reads the chapter as the debate's hinge: after this the friends stop refining their doctrine and Eliphaz's next speech turns instead to naming specific sins Job is nowhere shown to have committed.
Job 21:32, 3 voices
Job 21:32
“Yet shall he be brought to the grave - He shall die like other men; and the corruption of the grave shall prey upon him. Mr. Carlyle, in his specimens of Arabic poetry, Translations, p. 16, quotes this verse, which he translates and paraphrases, והוא לקברות יובל “He shall be brought to the grave,” ועל גדוש ישקוד And shall watch upon the high-raised heap.” It was the opinion of the pagan Arabs, that upon the death of any person, a bird, by them called Manah, issued from the brain, and haunted the sepulcher of the deceased, uttering a lamentable scream.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:32
“Yet--rather, "and." brought--with solemn pomp (Ps 45:15). grave--literally, "graves"; that is, the place where the graves are. remain in--rather, watch on the tomb, or sepulchral mound. Even after death he seems still to live and watch (that is, have his "remembrance" preserved) by means of the monument over the grave.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:32
“He shall remain in the tomb with a Hic jacet--Here lies, over him, and a large encomium. Perhaps it is meant of the embalming of his body to preserve it, which was a piece of honour anciently done by the Egyptians to their great men. He shall watch in the tomb (so the word is), shall abide solitary and quiet there, as a watchman in his tower.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Job 21:33, 3 voices
Job 21:33
“Ver. 33. He was sweet to the pebbles of Cocytus. 71. 'Cocytus' in the Greek tongue is the term for 'lamentation,' which is used to be taken for the lamentation of women, or any persons going weakly. Now the wise of this world being shut out from the light of truth, endeavoured by making search to hold a kind of shadows of truth. Hence they thought that the river Cocytus ran amongst the dead below, clearly denoting that they that commit deeds worthy of painful inflictions, run to an end into hell unto lamentation.”
Gregory the Dialogist· written before 604· Morals on the Book of Job, Book XVpatristic
Job 21:33
“The clods of the valley shall be sweet unto him - That is, he shall lie as calmly as others in the grave. The language here is taken from that delusion of which we all partake when we reflect on death. We think of “ourselves” in the grave, and it is almost impossible to divest our minds of the idea, that we shall be conscious there, and be capable of understanding our condition.”
Job 21:33
“As the classic saying has it, "The earth is light upon him." His repose shall be "sweet." draw--follow. He shall share the common lot of mortals; no worse off than they (Heb 9:27). UMBREIT not so well (for it is not true of "every man").”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Job 21:34, 3 voices
Job 21:34
"There is nothing left of your answers but emptiness," that is, you, he says, have brought me suffering and torments instead of consolation; and what I gain from speaking a great deal is only emptiness. Your answers, he says, are vanity to me.
Ishodad of Merv· written before 850· COMMENTARY ON JOB 21:34patristic
Job 21:34
“How then comfort ye me in vain - Mr. Good translates: “How vainly then would ye make me retract!” See the note on Job 21:2. I cannot retract any thing I have said, as I have proved by fact and testimony that your positions are false and unfounded. Your pretensions to comfort me are as hollow as the arguments you bring in support of your exceptionable doctrines. This chapter may be called Job’s triumph over the insinuated calumnies, and specious but false doctrines, of his opponents.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Job 21:34
“How - Why then do you seek to comfort me with vain hopes of recovering my prosperity, seeing your grounds are false, and experience shews, that good men are often in great tribulation, while the vilest of men prosper.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Job 21. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 13 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on A. B. Davidson, The Book of Job, Cambridge Bible; Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Book of Job; Gregory the Dialogist, Morals on the Book of Job, Book XV; Ishodad of Merv, COMMENTARY ON JOB 21:34; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry; Origen of Alexandria, FRAGMENTS ON JOB 15.25 and R. A. Watson, The Book of Job, Expositor's Bible.
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