Job 24:19

Drought and heat consume the snow waters,.... Melt the snow into water, and dry up that, which is done easily, quickly, and suddenly: [so doth] the grave [those which] have sinned; all have sinned,

He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth: he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards. In these verses Job quotes the opinion of his adversaries, ironically: he quoted them so before (Job 21:17-21).

As the snow, though it doth for a time lie upon the ground, yet at last is dissolved into water by the heat of the season, and that water quickly swallowed up by the earth when it is dry and thirsty; so ungodly sinners, though they live and prosper for a season, yet at last they shall go into the grave, which will consume them, together with all their hopes and comforts; their jolly life is attended with a sad, and ofttimes sudden and violent, death; not with such a death as the godly die, which perfects them and brings them to happiness, but with a consuming and never-dying death.

Job 24:19 Drought and heat consume the snow waters: [so doth] the grave [those which] have sinned.Ver. 19. Drought and heat consume the snow waters] Here also brevity hath bred obscurity. Snow waters, as they are more subtile, so they sooner sink into the dry earth; so die the wicked, quickly and easily. See Job 21:13; Job 21:31. There are that read the whole verse thus, In the drought and heat they rob, and in the snow waters; they sin to the grave; that is, they rob (and run into other flagitious practices) in all weather, summer and winter, and never stop till they die. They persist in their sins (saith Calvin) wherein they have been muzzled up, even to their grave. This is a good sense. Luther tells of one filthy adulterer, so set upon that sin that he was heard to utter these abominable words, If I were sure to live here for ever, and that I might still be carried from one brothel house to another, I would never desire any other heaven than that. Vae dementiae, et impietati. This beastly man breathed out his wretched soul between two harlots. Once I knew a most odious adulterer of seventy years old (saith another great divine, Mr Dan. Roger) who having wasted his flesh and state with harlots, and lying near death, was requested thus, Potter, call upon God; he replied, with his ordinary oaths, Pox (boils) and wounds, is this a time to pray? I knew (saith a third reverend man, Mr Bolton), a great swearer, who coming to his death bed, Satan so filled his heart with a maddened and enraged greediness after sin, that though himself swore as fast and as furiously as he could, yet (as though he had been already among the bannings and blasphemies of hell) he desperately desired the bystanders to help him with oaths, and to swear for him. Athenaeus reporteth of one covetous mammonist, that at the hour of his death he devoured many pieces of gold, and sewed the rest in his coat, commanding that they should be all buried with him. And our chroniclers write of King Edward I that he adjured his son and nobles, that if he died in his expedition against Bruce, king of Scots, they should not inter his corpse, but carry it about Scotland, till they had avenged him on that usurper (Dan. Hist. 201).

(19) So doth the grave those which have sinned.—Job had already spoken of the sudden death of the wicked as a blessing (Job 9:23; Job 21:13), as compared with the lingering torture he himself was called upon to undergo.

Verse 19. Drought and heat consume the snow-waters] The public cisterns or large tanks which had been filled with water by the melting of the snow on the mountains, and which water was stored for the irrigation of their lands, had been entirely exhausted by the intensity of the heat, and the long continuance of drought. So doth the grave those which have sinned.] For this whole paragraph we have only two words in the original; viz., שאול חטאו sheol chatau, "the pit, they have sinned;" which Mr. Good translates: - "They fall to their lowest depth." I believe the meaning to be, - even the deepest tanks, which held most water, and retained it longest, had become exhausted; so that expectation and succour were cut off from this as well as from every other quarter. I have elsewhere shown that שאול sheol signifies, not only hell and the grave, but any deep pit; and, also, that חטא chata signifies to miss the mark. Mr. Good, properly aware of these acceptations of the original words, has translated as above; and it is the only ground on which any consistent meaning can be given to the original.

19. As the fierce heat and drought evaporate the abundant waters of the dissolving winter snow, leaving no trace of them, so doth Sheol engulf the sinners, that they disappear without a remnant from the world; comp. ch. Job 6:15 seq., Job 14:11; Isaiah 5:14.

Drought and heat consume the snow-waters - Margin, “violently take;” see the notes at Job 6:17.

19. Consume the snow waters — The thought of the first clause of the preceding verse Job now proceeds to illustrate by an emblematic proverb.