Job 20
SIBInterrupting Job, Zophar the Naamathite, in no small fury, replied, 2. My thoughts make me burn and swell with matter of refutation, and oblige me to answer; therefore, highly provoked with thy speech, I make haste to the dispute, as a person fully prepared
Job 20:3
I have indeed heard a most reproachful answer to my own and my friend’s former speeches; but my heart enables me to answer in the most prudent and considerate manner. 4, 5. Knowest thou not, that all along from the creation the prosperity of a wicked man and hypocrite has been very short-lived and momentary
Job 20:6
Though his high-towering excellency mount up to heaven, and his temporal honours and happiness be advanced to the highest pitch, 7—9. He shall quickly perish in the most disgraceful and contemptible manner, without any hope of recovery
Job 20:10
His children, in their wretchedness, shall court the favour of the meanest, or attempt to satisfy them for the wrongs done to them by their father; and the works of his hands shall render him sorrow for his reward
Job 20:11
His youthful and secret wickedness shall bring such distempers upon him as shall hasten him to his grave, and shall attend him to hell
Job 20:12-14
If he with great fondness and pleasure indulged himself in his wickedness, it shall prove most bitter, unwholesome, painful, and destructive, to him, in the fear- 2 ful miseries attending it
Job 20:15
The riches which he has greedily and unjustly got into his possession he shall be forced to restore with great shame and torment. God shall so torment him with trouble and anguish of mind that he shall be sick of them
Job 20:16
That which he has been so eager in getting shall bring upon him the most terrible, painful, and destructive, judgments
Job 20:17
Never shall he enjoy the least real comfort in all his plenty of outward things
Job 20:18
He shall be obliged to restore the hire which he unjustly withheld; nay, even what he laboured for shall be cursed to him, and quickly lost along with his unjust gain; and he shall have no comfort in any thing he has
Job 20:19
Because he furiously oppressed the poor till he rendered them destitute, and violently seized houses which he built not
Job 20:20
Therefore shall he have no solid satisfaction in his own mind, but be in pain, as a travailing woman; and shall be deprived of all his desirable things
Job 20:21
He shall scarcely have wherewith to sustain himself in life, and shall have no goods left for any to look after
Job 20:22
In the very height of his prosperity he shall be terribly distressed; and even his fellows in impiety shall concur to render him miserable
Job 20:23
Whenever he shall attempt to satisfy himself in what he has, some extraordinary judgment shall of a sudden overtake him
Job 20:24
When he shall attempt to avoid one danger, another more dreadful shall overtake him: 25. And terribly shall the judgments of God torment and destroy him. Horrors of conscience shall seize upon him, as one who cannot live, and who dares not die
Job 20:26
Every kind of fearful calamities shall be reserved for him as his treasure, and shall follow him wherever he thinks to hide himself. Some awful judgment, which comes none knows how, shall consume him. His posterity and family shall, for his sake, be cursed of God, and entirely wasted and ruined
Job 20:27
God, by remarkable judgments of thunder, lightning, or the like, shall discover his notorious wickedness; and all creatures on earth shall exert themselves for his ruin
Job 20:28
His estate, which he had got by the labour of his family, shall quickly be taken from him, or destroyed, in the day when God manifests his wrath against him
Job 20:29
This is the portion and reward which God has allotted to impious and insolent sinners. CHAP. XX. Job immediately replied, 2. Instead of pretending to comfort me, patiently and attentively hear my speech. 3. Permit me freely to declare my mind, without interrupting me; and, when I have finished my pertinent reasoning, mock on as long as you please. 4. I have made my appeal to God; and, had it been to man, I could not but be vexed to find myself thus interrupted, reproached, and abused. 5. To see in me a religious and upright man so fearfully afflicted might overwhelm you with the most confounding astonishment at the awfully-sovereign providence of God, and at least make you willing to hold your peace while I speak. 6. For truly, when I think on it, I am filled with the most terrifying awe of his sovereign judgments. 7. But, if wicked men always meet with such fearful calamities as you have pretended, whence it is that many of them for a long time flourish in uncommon prosperity and power; 8. Nay, live to see their children, and children’s children, settled and prosperous? 9. Their habitations and families live in peace and security, and are not loaded with any afflictions; 10. While their cattle are extremely healthful, prosperous, and fruitful, 11. 12. Their wives with the greatest ease bring forth multitudes of children, who employ themselves in nothing but carnal joy and mirth. 13. Even unto old age they spend their days in earthly prosperity and carnal indulgence, and at last die very easily, without any sense of pain. 14. 15. Gratified and puffed up with their prosperity, they, in the most daring manner, testify their dislike and contempt of the knowledge, service, and worship, of God. 16. It is God, however, not themselves, who renders 3 them wealthy and powerful. Yet far be it from me to join with them in their implicity: 17. But let facts speak for themselves. How often are wicked men’s shining prosperity and honour extinguished by fearful judgments, and justly merited destruction? How often does God, as by lot, distribute to them cutangling bonds of trouble and sorrow in his anger? 18. How often are they of a sudden fearfully carried away before the sweeping whirlwinds of his awful judgments? 19. How often are either wicked men’s children or themselves rewarded with fearful punishments? 20. How often do wicked men on earth experience the distinguishing judgments and hot burning wrath of the Almighty? 21. And, though their children should prosper, what pain, care, or pleasure, can they have about their house and family after they are cut off by an early death? 22. Dare any of you pretend to teach God how to govern the world, and whom to prosper and whom not? or to prescribe rules by which he must judge men, who, even the highest, are in death but the food of worms? 23, 24. Some men, both good and bad, die in the very prime of their life and height of their prosperity, and in a very easy manner. 25. Others die amidst torments of body and anguish of mind, without ever partaking of earthly happiness or pleasure: 26. They lie down together in the same condition in the grave, and the vermin make an equal prey of both; so that none can tell who is good or who is bad by any external events. 27. I can indeed easily foresee what you, in your reproachful speeches and imaginations, will think and say. 28. You will ask, What is become of my own once princely family, and of the dwellings of my children? And if providence had not plainly marked us out for wicked, by the fearful judgments which have befallen us? 29, 30. But cannot even the most common passenger tell you, that they have observed that wicked men are often preserved, as in a secret place, amidst destructive judgments, and are carried forth with pomp in the day of overflowing wrath, and the punishment of their crimes reserved for the other world? 31. Their power is often so great on earth, that nobody dare reprove or can punish them for their crimes. 32. Nay, they are brought in pomp to the grave, and honourably and quietly rest in their tombs. 33. They sleep as quietly in their graves as the best; and all men, whether good or bad, by little and little, follow them into that state of the dead, without any visible difference betwixt them. 34. Why then attempt ye to comfort me with unsubstantial hopes of future happiness? And why doth the vilest prevarication, inconsistent with the cause of God or your duty, continue to be the whole sum of your discourse?
REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XX.—Alas! the most confident and forward in a dispute are seldom in the right; and with such the kindest warning is interpreted into an affront, and returned with insolence; and the dictates of passion pass for the arguments of reason. The truths of God are often, as here, excellently explained, but miserably applied. Short lived is a wicked man’s prosperity, and a hypocrite’s profession. If not in this life, sin and ruin shall in the next appear certainly inseparable. And, the higher men tower in sinful prosperity, their fall into the pit of destruction shall be the more dreadful. What terrible consequences have the often unthought-of sins of youth! Bitter are the issues of those sins which are reckoned sweet; and inexpressible the loss of those which are reckoned gainful. Where God’s curse lies there can be no real felicity. But dreadful shall it be to the wicked when all their dreams of happiness shall be disappointed, their secret sins revealed, and the wrath of God shall take an everlasting hold of them! Let the sound of destruction—terrible destruction—everlasting destruction, that is in my ears, drive me to Jesus Christ, and the everlasting redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of my sins, according to the riches of his grace