Job 21:17 - Meaning and Application

Job had already described the prosperity of wicked people. Now he turns that against what his friends had claimed about their sure ruin in this life. He is saying, “Tell me, how often do you really see the lamp of the wicked go out? Do you not just as often see it burn down to the socket and go out on its own?” (Job 21:17). Sometimes people who live in open sin end their days in honor and comfort. That is enough to weaken his friends’ argument and to show that outward success is not a safe test of a person’s character.

Job then brings this into agreement with the holiness and justice of God. Even when wicked people prosper all their days, we should not assume God will always leave their sin unpunished. While they are still prospering, they are like straw and chaff before a stormy wind (Job 21:18). They are light, empty, and of little worth, both to God and to wise and good people. They are already fit for destruction and always exposed to it.

Even if they spend their whole lives in wealth, God is storing up their guilt for their children (Job 21:19). In time, he will bring that guilt back on their descendants after the parents are gone. The oppressor stores up goods for his children to make them important people, but God stores up the father’s sin for them, and that can make them beggars. He keeps careful record of the fathers’ sins, as Deuteronomy 32:34 says, and at the right time he will punish them justly, even when the riches that carry the curse are left in the children’s hands.

Though wicked people may prosper in this world, they will still be answered for in the next. God will repay them according to their deeds at last (Job 21:19), even if their evil is not punished right away. They may not be made to fear the coming wrath now. They may even comfort themselves with the hope that they will keep peace while they go on sinning. But they will feel it in the day when God’s righteous judgment is revealed. “His eyes shall see his destruction” (Job 21:20), meaning he will finally be forced to see what he refused to believe. Those who will not see the truth now will see it then (Isaiah 26:11). The eyes that were shut against God’s grace will be opened to see his judgment.

“He shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty,” Job says, and that will be his cup. Compare Psalm 11:6 with Revelation 14:10. These few words describe the misery of lost sinners in a terrible way. They lie under the wrath of an Almighty God, who shows both his anger and his power in their destruction. If that is what waits for them in the next world, what good will their prosperity in this world do them? What pleasure will he have in his house after him? (Job 21:21). Our Savior showed how little comfort the rich man in hell had in his house after him. The memory of the good things he received in life only added to his misery, and so did the fear that his five brothers, left in his house after him, would follow him to the place of torment (Luke 16:25-28). The gain of the world will profit little to the one who has lost his soul.

Job then explains this difference in outward treatment by the wisdom and rule of God (Job 21:22). “Can anyone teach God knowledge?” he asks. Are we really going to judge God’s ways or blame his conduct? Can we tell God how he should govern the world, which sinner he should spare, and whom he should punish? He has both the right and the power to judge those who are high. Angels in heaven, and princes and magistrates on earth, are answerable to God and must receive their sentence from him. He rules them and uses them as he pleases. Should he then answer to us, or take advice from us? He is the Judge of all the earth, and he will do right (Genesis 18:25, Romans 3:6). What may seem like conflicting actions in his providence can all be made to work together, not only in harmony, but for his own purposes.

Job then shows how little difference there is between one wicked person dying in pain and another dying more peacefully, since both will end in hell if they are finally lost. He compares that with the small difference between one person dying suddenly and another slowly, since both will soon meet in the grave. The gap between time and eternity is so great that, if hell is the end of every sinner, it makes little difference whether one goes there singing or sighing.

People die in many different ways. There is one way into the world, as people say, but many ways out. Some are born quickly and easily, while others come into the world through hard and drawn-out labor. In the same way, some die with much more terror than others. Since the death of the body is the soul’s birth into another world, death-bed pain may well be compared to child-birth pain. One man dies suddenly, in full strength, not worn down by age or sickness (Job 21:23). He is calm and at ease, with no thought that death is near and no fear of it. Instead, because his breasts are full of milk and his bones are moistened with marrow (Job 21:24), meaning he is healthy, strong, and in good condition, he expects to live many more years in joy and pleasure.

Yet such a man can be cut off in a moment by death. It is common for people to be taken away while they are at their strongest, when they are healthiest, when they least expect death, and when they think they are safest from it. Many have been well and dead in the same week, or even the same day, the same hour, or the same minute. So we should never feel secure. We should always be ready.

Another man dies slowly, with much pain and misery beforehand (Job 21:25). He dies in the bitterness of his soul, like Job himself was suffering at that very time, and he never eats with pleasure. He has no appetite and no enjoyment in food because of sickness, age, or deep sorrow. Those who are healthy and always eat with pleasure have great reason to be thankful. And those who sometimes cannot eat that way have little reason to complain when they remember how many people never enjoy their food at all.

This difference disappears in the grave. Rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy, meet there alike (Job 21:26). They lie together in the dust, and the worms cover them and feed on them.

So, if one wicked man dies in a palace and another dies in a dungeon, they will still meet in the company of the dead and the condemned. The unending worm and the fire that never goes out will be the same for both. Compared with that, the differences in how they lived and died are small and hardly worth worrying over.