Chapter 21
Job replies to Zophar:
3 Bear with me, and I will speak, and after I have spoken, mock on. [Job 21:3 ESV]
Wow. Just dripping with sarcasm. Job is not very happy with his guests.
Job asks why it is that the wicked do so well, enjoy their lives, sing, and dance, and watch their children rise to positions they are proud of, and when they get old, they die peacefully.
7 Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? [Job 21:7 ESV]
13 They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol. [Job 21:13 ESV]
14 They say to God, 'Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways. 15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?' [Job 21:14-15 ESV]
2023 - As noted in the last chapter, the three friends are full of "rules" that in fact do not apply. It is just not true that the evil are brought down and the good always rise. It was never true. Job now has first hand experience that this way of looking at things is so far off of reality that it is just nonsense. Look at 13 above. These are so evil they knowingly jeer at God. Justice is not something that happens without fail in this world. One might make the case that if we cast the net wide enough looking at specifics, it is probably stomped on more than being the rule. And Job now knows this is the case. He is re-evaluating his data. Just look at this verse and following:
17 "How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them? That God distributes pains in his anger? [Job 21:17 ESV]. Job wants to see the numbers. He wants a statistical analysis of just how often this accepted axiom of the way reality works is really what happens. Job knows first hand. And rather than God demonstrating that it is not always true by having a bunch of evil people that Job knows suddenly start doing very well - such that the axiom will be "They're rich, but they ain't happy, and they won't be rich all that long", so they could continue in their complacency, God does just the opposite. He shows that the rule isn't worth the paper it's written on by letting absolutely horrendous things happen to Job - a good man. If God had done it the other way, the point would have been missed entirely.
Job wants to know how they ignore God for their whole lives and are not punished. He anticipates his friends' answers that God stores up vengeance to be visited on the children of the wicked. Job says he wants them punished themselves, let those who do wickedness receive the punishment that they deserve. I cannot help but agree with Job. Especially with vs 13. How can they have happy lives, have successful children, and then get state funerals when they die, when they are not at all beholden to God in their lives, nor do they credit their success to him. It should be the wicked themselves that die, not the third or fourth generation after them. God also deals with Israel in this way. It was Manasseh who received the curse that would end the southern kingdom, but it wasn't carried out for what, five generations? I think Job sees this the same way - has the same understanding of it. Maybe he's suggesting that he is being punished for some ancestor's sin, because he knows he's done nothing. And when the rest of us come upon hard times, is it because of something done long ago by someone else? When it comes to salvation, there is Eze 18 I think it is. We go to heaven or hell based on what we do here. But our physical lives are not rationally lived and died. The world is not subject to cause and effect. Bad things happen to good people, and it rains on both the evil and the good. This verse really sums up the randomness of life in this world:
26 They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them. [Job 21:26 ESV]
2021 - I am not sure Job is so much wondering how the evil can prosper as he is laying waste to Zophar's chapter. According to Zophar, the evil always get their "just desserts", and their good fortunes don't last. Job points out that the evil do indeed have pleasant lives sometimes, then die in peace, leaving their children very well off, thank you. So I think now that Job is pointing out the obvious, observable contradictions in Zophar's philosophy of good and evil. This verse sort of confirms that I'm on the right track now:
17 "How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them? That God distributes pains in his anger? [Job 21:17 ESV] It's like Job is asking Zophar to produce his statistics showing that evil get what they deserve. They must all have known it wasn't so.
2024 - It isn't always so. The best way to state it is that the earthly fate of both the wicked and the good is the same. Sometimes the good get rich, do well, have great kids, die without suffering...and sometimes it is the evil who have this life. And the opposite is also true. Sometimes the evil can't sleep, live in fear, have to watch their backs at every turn, see their own children die, and then they die of some painful wasting drawn out disease. And sometimes good people have this life. It requires little effort to produce examples showing that these axioms Job's friends keep stating as absolute inviolable truths in fact are true no more than they are false. So Job is saying hey! I'm not stupid ya know. Those rules are in fact just random possibilities and happen as often to one as the other. If you want to comfort me, at least give me an explanation for this that is demonstrably true! Cliches about good and evil are just empty words while I sit here in ashes with dirt on my head and have leaky boils all over my body including the soles of my feet! Look at me, he is saying, and then tell me how true your are your rules!
34 How then will you comfort me with empty nothings? There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood." [Job 21:34 ESV]. Job considers Zophar's position destroyed. I agree with Job. It does not work as Zophar says.