Job 21:1
Then Job answered:
BSB
Parallel translations (2) ▾
ASV
Then Job answered and said,
KJV
But Job answered and said,
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Commentary
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About Job
Job 21:1
Then Job answered:
BSB
ASV
Then Job answered and said,
KJV
But Job answered and said,
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.
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.
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.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.