Job 9:22 - Meaning and Application

Job touches here on the main issue between him and his friends. They kept saying that righteous people always prosper in this world, and that only the wicked suffer. Job said the opposite, that wicked people often prosper, while the righteous are often in great distress. This was the chief point of disagreement, and since his friends had not proved their claim, Job held to his own: he said, and kept saying, that the same things come to everyone.

There is a great deal of truth in what Job means here. When God sends temporal judgments, or troubles in this life, they often fall on both good and bad people. The destroying angel seldom makes a difference between the houses of Israelites and the houses of Egyptians, though at one time he did. In the judgment of Sodom, which is called “the punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7), God would never slay the righteous with the wicked, or treat the righteous as if they were wicked (Genesis 18:25). But in judgments that are only for this life, the righteous do suffer too, and sometimes they suffer most.

The sword destroys one person as well as another, Josiah as well as Ahab. In this way, God destroys both the innocent and the guilty, bringing them into the same common ruin. Good and bad were taken together into Babylon (Jeremiah 24:5, Jeremiah 24:9). If a sudden plague or disaster sweeps everyone away, God is pleased to see that the same trouble which brings the wicked to ruin becomes a test of the innocent and of their faith. That faith will then be found to bring praise, honor, and glory (1 Peter 1:7; Psalm 66:10).

This should help God’s children be more patient in their troubles. These troubles are only trials, meant for their good and honor. If God is pleased with them, they should not be displeased. If he seems to laugh at the trial of the innocent, because he knows how glorious the outcome will be, then they too may laugh at destruction and famine (Job 5:22), and even triumph over death, saying, “O death! Where is your sting?”

On the other hand, the wicked are so far from being the special targets of God’s judgments that “the earth is given into the hands of the wicked” (Job 9:24). They get large holdings and great power. They have what they want and do what they want. The original may even mean “the wicked one,” that is, the devil, who is called the god of this world and boasts that the world has been handed over to him (Luke 4:6). Or Job may mean a wicked man, perhaps some notorious tyrant living in that region, whose great evil and great success were well known to Job and his friends.

The wicked may be given the earth, but the righteous are given heaven. Which is better, heaven without earth, or earth without heaven? In his providence, God often raises up wicked men and hides the faces of those who should be judges, wise and good people fit to rule. He buries them, as it were, in obscurity, and may even allow them to be pushed down and condemned, with their faces covered like criminals, by those wicked men into whose hands the earth is given. We see this happening every day. If it is not God doing it, then where is the one who does? To whom else can it be credited except the one who rules in human kingdoms and gives them to whom he will (Daniel 4:32)?

Still, there was too much passion in what Job said. His manner of speaking was sharp and impatient. When he meant that God afflicts, he should not have said, “He destroys both the perfect and the wicked.” When he meant that God takes pleasure in testing the innocent, he should not have said, “He laughs at it,” because God does not afflict willingly. When our spirit is stirred up by argument or discouragement, we need to guard our words carefully, so that we speak about holy things with proper respect.