Job 21 Commentary

Job 21 Commentary

Job has been very polite and humble in his arguments. Not anymore. He takes Zophar’s speech and shreds it into pieces in one of the finest arguments in the entire book.

Zophar had said: “The mirth of the wicked is brief.” Job takes this very fact and points to yet another undeniable fact: “they spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace.” We are talking about the wicked. Both statements are true. What does Zophar have to say about this?

Job then sarcastically mocks the nature of justice that the friends have imputed on God. Why should the children of the wicked man get the punishment of their father? Let the punishment fall on the man himself. Being wicked, such a man won’t consider it a punishment since he probably won’t care about the fate of his own children. He is selfish and cares for himself only!

In this chapter, Job has shown his friends, including us, just how difficult it is to define divinity using tools of human reasoning. We can clearly see that the God that Zophar is talking about isn’t just at all.

Who can understand God? Can anyone teach knowledge to God? That is the reason Job hasn’t addressed himself to his friends, but rather to the LORD, God Almighty. He wonders why the friends are answering questions that are not ‘directed to a human being’.

Job addresses another bitter fact. One person dies in full vigor, completely secure, and at ease. According to Job’s friends, this is the fate of the righteous.

Another dies in bitterness of soul – the fate of the wicked according to Job’s friends.

Interestingly, both copses lie side by side and are covered in worms. Eliphaz’s simple equation, Zophar’s logic, and Bildad’s philosophies are all too dull to represent the right picture of God’s love and justice. Their end product is a great injustice to the suffering righteous man, and a great escape to the prosperous wicked man. They all end up at the grave.

Job’s friends have presented the grave as the final, grand, and comprehensive punishment for the wicked. However, the righteous also end up there. Who would disagree with Job that the friends’ arguments are ‘nonsense’ and their answers are nothing but ‘falsehood’.

They have also presented suffering in this life as punishment for wickedness. What about the countless sinners who are at large and living large!

It is easier to be an observer rather than a participant in this very hot debate. But the Book of Job has a way of drawing the reader into the battle of thoughts. What is the point of life? Will it all end this way for me, regardless? What is the shape and color of God’s justice?

We measure God’s justice with human rulers. Each man has his own ruler, which he calibrates using tools of his own experiences and observations. These calibration tools are bound by time and space.

A child who receives a beating from his mother thinks of her mother as a bad and unjust person in the moment. Stretch that moment from a minute to 40 years, and the same mother is no longer bad and unjust!

We reason using little brains! But God is everything else and much more than we can ever know!

The reader is, however, in a privileged position, having read Job’s timeless statement: I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

To know that there is a Redeemer, and that He will one day stand to Judge all, is the greatest treasure of this book. Then the saint can yearn for a day when he will see Him.

More resources visit http://www.lovingscripture.com