Job 18

Job 18:2

How long wilt thou cast forth such confused, double-meaning, and unintelligible words, as if you wanted to entrap us? Declare plainly what you intend, and after that we shall deliver our minds with the utmost clearness, freedom, and boldness

Job 18:3

For to what purpose is it to talk with one who looks upon us as a company of dull beasts, into whom nothing of wisdom can enter?

Job 18:4

With impatient rage you tear and torment yourself. Must God, to humour thee, suspend or cease his government of the world, and leave every thing to chance: or must he alter his immutable counsels, or the fixed laws of his providence?

Job 18:5

But, say what thou wilt, though the wicked man may prosper for a while, all his splendour and apparent happiness shall quickly come to an end

Job 18:6

The wealth and honour of his family shall be turned into misery, contempt, and sorrow, together with himself

Job 18:7

His bold and resolute attempts to increase or maintain his prosperity, shall be unsuccessful, and involve him in insurmountable difficulties: and his own devices shall prove the means of his overthrow

Job 18:8

His own wiles and works bring him into inextricable difficulty and distress; and every step he takes, in prosecution of his designs, or in the way of pleasing himself, is attended with perpetual danger, and farther ensnares him

Job 18:9

While ruinous snares take hold of and entangle him, they, who thirst for his blood, wealth, or honours, shall prevail against him

Job 18:10

Even when he neither foresees nor fears it, he is always in danger of some sudden mischief

Job 18:11

Unexpected and overturning terrors shall fearfully affright him on all hands, and waste him away on his feet, while they make him to run from place to place for safety

Job 18:12

Sorrows shall insatiably, as with intense hunger, feed upon him, till his strength, wealth, and honour, be entirely wasted; and nothing but prepared and terrible destruction shall every where attend him

Job 18:13

Bottenness, fearful affliction, and a miserable death, shall consume his flesh and bones

Job 18:14

Whatever he relied upon, for the support of himself and family, shall utterly fail him, and hasten his unhappy death; while terrors, as a mighty king, shall drive him into the depths of hell

Job 18:15

Terrors, despair, and destruction, shall dwell in his habitation, which he unjustly acquired; and thunder and lightning, or some exemplary judgment, like that of Sodom, shall destroy it

Job 18:16

His whole estate, habitation, and family, shall be irrecoverably ruined

Job 18:17

And the very name of him shall be buried in everlasting infamy and forgetfulness

Job 18:18

He shall be driven from his prosperity and life into misery and death, and chased out of the world, as a nuisance, into eternal fire

Job 18:19

None of his descendants or kindred shall long survive him, to keep up his remembrance

Job 18:20

They on every side, who behold, and ’they who afterward read or hear of, the fearful vengeance of God upon him, shall be astonished and terrified at it

Job 18:21

This, indeed, is a just description of the miserable condition of the wicked at last; and thus shall those who dishonour God be abased

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XVIII.—There is much wisdom in leaving off contention before it be meddled with; it so furiously heats men’s spirits, and makes them to misinterpret every thing said or done by their antagonist; nay, makes them to misapply the most precious or tremendous truths of God! They suspect affronts that were never intended. They even torment themselves—their pride and passion proving hurtful to both soul and body. But to what terrible judgments of God, in time, in death, and chiefly in eternity, are the wicked exposed! Short lived and unsubstantial is their prosperity, and heavy the curse that is upon them! Being abandoned of God, Satan first ensnares and afterwards torments them. Agitated by their lusts, they rush headlong into ruin; till death, in all his stings and terrors, devours them! Then friends, physicians, and all human supports, are vain! Their glorious prosperity is quickly turned into everlasting shame and contempt