Job 20--ZOPHAR SPEAKS: THE WICKED WILL SUFFER

Zophar Speaks: The Wicked Will Suffer
20 Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said:

2 “Therefore my thoughts answer me,
    because of my haste within me.
3 I hear censure that insults me,
    and out of my understanding a spirit answers me.
4 Do you not know this from of old,
    since man was placed on earth,
5 that the exulting of the wicked is short,
    and the joy of the godless but for a moment?
6 Though his height mount up to the heavens,
    and his head reach to the clouds,
7 he will perish forever like his own dung;
    those who have seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’
8 He will fly away like a dream and not be found;
    he will be chased away like a vision of the night.
9 The eye that saw him will see him no more,
    nor will his place any more behold him.
10 His children will seek the favor of the poor,
    and his hands will give back his wealth.
11 His bones are full of his youthful vigor,
    but it will lie down with him in the dust.

12 “Though evil is sweet in his mouth,
    though he hides it under his tongue,
13 though he is loath to let it go
    and holds it in his mouth,
14 yet his food is turned in his stomach;
    it is the venom of cobras within him.
15 He swallows down riches and vomits them up again;
    God casts them out of his belly.
16 He will suck the poison of cobras;
    the tongue of a viper will kill him.
17 He will not look upon the rivers,
    the streams flowing with honey and curds.
18 He will give back the fruit of his toil
    and will not swallow it down;
from the profit of his trading
    he will get no enjoyment.
19 For he has crushed and abandoned the poor;
    he has seized a house that he did not build.

20 “Because he knew no contentment in his belly,
    he will not let anything in which he delights escape him.
21 There was nothing left after he had eaten;
    therefore his prosperity will not endure.
22 In the fullness of his sufficiency he will be in distress;
    the hand of everyone in misery will come against him.
23 To fill his belly to the full,
    God will send his burning anger against him
    and rain it upon him into his body.
24 He will flee from an iron weapon;
    a bronze arrow will strike him through.
25 It is drawn forth and comes out of his body;
    the glittering point comes out of his gallbladder;
    terrors come upon him.
26 Utter darkness is laid up for his treasures;
    a fire not fanned will devour him;
    what is left in his tent will be consumed.
27 The heavens will reveal his iniquity,
    and the earth will rise up against him.
28 The possessions of his house will be carried away,
    dragged off in the day of God's wrath.
29 This is the wicked man's portion from God,
    the heritage decreed for him by God.”

---

We see Zophar again dip back into mysticism a bit when he says that he hears "a spirit" answer him to tell him what to say, but which spirit?  Was this the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit)?  We are told as the Church to "test the spirits" in 1 John 4 because every spirit which glorifies Jesus as both Christ as Lord is of God, but every spirit which does not glorify Jesus Christ, the Lord is not of God.  Do not confuse "glorify" with giving verbal ascent to, because the demons knew when they were in the presence of their Creator and reacted out of fear and referred to Jesus with the proper title, but this is not what I mean.  The function of the Holy Spirit is to make Christ the center and focal point of everything in the same way that the Son's role while here on earth was not to glorify Himself, but to glorify the Father.  With that said, do we see an argument here from Zophar that truly glorifies God by speaking correctly of His invisible attributes or do we see an answer full of the wisdom of the world that comes from the evil one and is opposed to the things of God and his nature?  It may even sound "good," but what is the end of this logic, to draw Zophar and other men into redemption and God's gospel, or a system of self-righteousness and trying to please God through our works and be "good enough" to earn God's favor?  Job has argued the former throughout the book where his friends have argued the later throughout the book.  Let's see where Zophar goes this time and where this "spirit" leads him.

Zophar argues that God always punishes those who celebrate wickedness and He does so swiftly, but was that the case? Did God immediately bring about the full curse on Adam and Eve the moment they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  If so, the entire human race would have died there without redemption and there would have been two human souls along with many demons in hell, and it would appear as if God was neither good enough nor powerful enough to do anything about sin.  In a sense Satan would get to claim victory that the image-bearers of God and the creation God made were not so good after all, but God patiently waited hundreds of years before man did what was evil, always, all the time, and every thought and intention of his heart was evil before He decided to send the Flood--but even in this, God still saved Noah and his family.

God then had every right to destroy Canaan for his sin after the Flood and knowing the wickedness that would come from his lineage and corrupt the nations, but God graciously confused the languages of the world to make it harder for this corruption to spread and waited hundreds of more years for the sin of Canaan to come to its fullness before judging them during the Exodus (though we saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples before then).  Remember though, these men are living around the time of Abraham, so they have not yet seen this--but they should understand that the Lord is slow to anger.  While He does not let the wicked go unpunished, He certainly is not waiting to zap you every time you mess up.

Zophar argues that the life of the one who rebels against God will be short and full of pain and that all the blessings that were perceived to come to the righteous (children, land, good health, etc) would be taken away from such a man--again, he's claiming he knows this is what's happening to Job.  The wicked man does not get to enjoy his riches and God gives such a man a sour outlook on life and anxiety and stress to make those things that should appear to be blessings to have a sour taste as bad food that someone vomits up when they get food poisoning.  Zophar argues that such a man will not enjoy the rich blessings of God or enjoy the fruit of his labor.

Zophar answers that such a man would be full of greed and covetousness and would desire to horde wealth and cling to his material possessions but in seeking to control his stuff, his stuff will control him and he will have no peace.  Zophar argues that such a man will be at constant war with everyone and that God and man will rise up in testimony against such a man in the final judgment and that God will consume the man's possessions with his wrath and that will be his portion and eternal reward (justice) for such a man as this.

Okay, so we hinted at this already, and Job is probably going to, in typical fashion, respond to this in the next chapter.  Is this the ultimate end of the ungodly?  In some ways Zophar gets it right that God uses their greed against them to make that which is good taste sour to them and their lives are full of anxiety over that which they cannot control.  It is a lot to try to play God and keep the whole world in your hands--a weight for too heave for any man.  While we do see from Romans 1 that God eventually allows man to harden his heart to the point where God reaches a breaking point and hardens the heart of such a man and gives him over to strong delusions and lets him experience the just rewards of his wickedness, God takes no pleasure in having to do this and desires for all men to come to repentance and to believe the gospel.  God would have much rather poured out His wrath on His Son on the cross than to pour out His wrath on you and me.


While typically not the version that I use for my blogs, I like how the KJV translates the word often translates as "mercy" or "kindness" or sometimes "patience" in the Old Testament as "longsuffering."  Here are some examples from both the Old Testament and New Testament.


Exodus 34:6
And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Numbers 14:18
The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Romans 2:4
Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?

So this is mostly what Zophar gets wrong, not that God will judge such a person but that God desires to do so and God's intent in doing so.  If you're studying along with us in The Gospel Project, then you should have a pretty good idea about the nature of God and how He has from the beginning had His mind set on the gospel and the redemption of mankind--something He set out to do before He even spoke the world into existence.  Indeed, Job was correct last chapter to call God his Redeemer.