Job 21--Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper

Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper
21 Then Job answered and said:

2 “Keep listening to my words,
    and let this be your comfort.
3 Bear with me, and I will speak,
    and after I have spoken, mock on.
4 As for me, is my complaint against man?
    Why should I not be impatient?
5 Look at me and be appalled,
    and lay your hand over your mouth.
6 When I remember, I am dismayed,
    and shuddering seizes my flesh.
7 Why do the wicked live,
    reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
8 Their offspring are established in their presence,
    and their descendants before their eyes.
9 Their houses are safe from fear,
    and no rod of God is upon them.
10 Their bull breeds without fail;
    their cow calves and does not miscarry.
11 They send out their little boys like a flock,
    and their children dance.
12 They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
    and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
13 They spend their days in prosperity,
    and in peace they go down to Sheol.
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?’
16 Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
    The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

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?
18 That they are like straw before the wind,
    and like chaff that the storm carries away?
19 You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
    Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
20 Let their own eyes see their destruction,
    and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 For what do they care for their houses after them,
    when the number of their months is cut off?
22 Will any teach God knowledge,
    seeing that he judges those who are on high?
23 One dies in his full vigor,
    being wholly at ease and secure,
24 his pails full of milk
    and the marrow of his bones moist.
25 Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having tasted of prosperity.
26 They lie down alike in the dust,
    and the worms cover them.

​27 “Behold, I know your thoughts
    and your schemes to wrong me.
28 For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
    Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
29 Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
    and do you not accept their testimony
30 that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
    that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
31 Who declares his way to his face,
    and who repays him for what he has done?
32 When he is carried to the grave,
    watch is kept over his tomb.
33 The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
    all mankind follows after him,
    and those who go before him are innumerable.
34 How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
    There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

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Job once again tries to bring his audience back into focus and say they are arguing against straw men--points that were easy for them to argue against, but were never the points that he made, and that they needed to listen more closely to his words.  It's pretty easy to beat up a scarecrow, which is where the "straw man argument" fallacy gets its name.  Instead of actually addressing your opponent's point or points, you make it out as if they argued something weaker or maybe something completely other than what they actually said and then argue against that.

Job then reminds them that his words were never addressed to man (his friends) and that he is only taking issue with God and His justice, and that in his current estate, he thinks he has every right to demand an immediate answer.  His mind then must go to the place of asking about other perceived injustices like the wicked prospering and how long will God allow that to occur?  Embedded in this question is still the issue of how long God will allow His children who have been declared righteous to suffer--we get a better answer to this in the book of Psalms.  (Here's a listing of times the phrase "How long...?" appears in just the book of Psalms: in the English Standard Version of the Bible).

Job then makes the argument that the wicked do seem to prosper, and I can only imagine given the times that he probably was living in that he was a Shemite looking at the sin of the children of Ham, more specifically, probably looking at the sin of the Canaanites that lived around him.  They were not God-fearing people and made idols for themselves that would allow them to continue in their sin and bring that sin into their worship of their false gods and even encouraged them to become more sinful.  The sin of the Canaanites was well-known at that time and we know that God told His people that He would use Egypt to keep them in slavery to keep them from falling victim to the corruption of the Canaanites (we just studied this in the book of Exodus).  So Job's question is what good it does man to worship the one true God of heaven if He also blesses the wicked and ungodly and seems to pour out His wrath on His followers?  It's a valid question if your focus is "What's in it for me?"The answer to this question honestly if our focus is on the temporal may be, "Nothing."  Jesus will tell His disciples that they need to count the cost of being His disciples and understand that they will have to give up much to follow Him and they will be hated and will have much trouble and tribulation, and people may even try to kill them for being the people He has called them to be.  But He promises that our reward is not in the kingdom of this world nor in the here and now (though we do receive good gifts from the Father in the here and now), but rather that every man will receive his rewards in the judgment that is to come.

Job then asks why it is that God seems to not punish the wicked and why people assume that God punishes their children for the sins of the fathers?  Is that just?  Shouldn't a man be punished for his own sins and shouldn't his children be punished for their sins and not the sins of their fathers?  What kind of justice is that?  It seems to Job that God could learn a thing or two about justice in the here and now (we know this is not true) as he thinks that even the earthly judges are at least sometimes more just than our heavenly judge.  Job finds it unjust that the wicked seem to have a "good" life while the righteous suffer and both come to the same end of death where they both seem to have equal outcomes, but do they?  Is the eternal outcome of the wicked and the righteous the same?

What Job is missing is that God does not want anyone to die in their sins, but that's exactly what would happen if He gave everyone the full measure of the wrath that they deserved for their sin, because sin against an infinitely good and holy God deserves an infinitely severe punishment.  God also wants His justice to be executed without question as to a person's innocence or guilt.  On the day that the books are opened to judge both the living and the dead, everyone will agree on the righteous judgment of God that each person being condemned stands guilty as charged.  In that day, we will receive ultimate justice and receive our rewards, either for the righteousness that comes through Christ or the unrighteousness that comes through Adam.

Job says he already knows his friends will say, "Show me such a man," acting as if they don't believe this hypothetical situation actually exists.  But Job argues all they need to do is get up and travel a bit to the nearby areas of the world or listen to the testimony of those who travel to the other parts of the world (this again makes me think that he's talking about the Canaanites that seemed to live nearby to him since he probably lived on the east side of the Jordan River and the area on the west side of the Jordan River was full of wickedness and corruption--think of Sodom and Gomorrah as this is probably what's on his mind).

Job said that this is so evident that the only answer they could use to argue against this would be lies and they need not say anything more.  Do you think that will stop them from arguing?  Do you think that they will finally realize that Job's argument is with God and not really with man and that they have no cause to be a part of this debate?  Do you think God will finally answer Job and speak for Himself and justify Himself to avail Himself of the charges that Job brings before Him?  How will God respond to Job's accusations?  Who ultimately wins the challenge between God and Satan (that's an answer we should all already know the answer to)?  Keep coming back to find out as we are actually at about the halfway point of the book right now, but the time of arguments for Job and his three friends is just about over.