Job 20

“The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best strength that he may be able to bear it.” —P B

Zophar is next in line to speak, but he has nothing new to say. It’s the same old story: God punishes the wicked, so Job had better get right with God. His key text is Job 20:5: “The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.” This theme has already been discussed by Bildad (8:11–19; 18) and Eliphaz (15:20–35), but Zophar is so disturbed by Job’s last speech that he feels he must speak. “I hear a rebuke that dishonors me, and my understanding inspires me to reply” (20: niv). Zophar felt insulted by Job and decided to defend himself.

Zophar makes three affirmations to prove that the fate of the wicked is indeed terrible: their life is brief (Job 20:4–11), their pleasure is temporary (vv. 12–19), and their death is painful (vv. 20–29).

Their life is brief (Job 20:4–11). Zophar declares that from the beginning of human history the triumphing (“mirth”) of the wicked has been short. We wonder where he got his information, for the Lord waited 120 years before sending the flood (Gen. 6:3), and God gave the wicked Canaanites at least four centuries before He judged them (15:13–16).

Most of the people in Scripture who pondered the problem of evil in the world started from a different premise—the wicked enjoy long life and freedom from trouble, while the righteous suffer much and die young (Ps. 37; 73; Jer. 12:1–4). Zophar was deliberately blocking out a lot of data to prove his point.

According to Zophar, the higher the wicked man climbs in his success, the farther down he will fall when his judgment comes. When he falls, he will go down the drain like his own dung; and people will ask, “Where is he?” (Job 20:6–7). He will vanish like a forgotten dream or like a night vision that cannot be called back (v. 8).

Not only will the wicked man’s person and name vanish, but so will his wealth. After his death, the truth about his crimes will become known; and his children will have to use their inheritance to pay back the people their father has robbed. Their father was still in “youthful vigor” when he died (v. 11 niv), but now he lies lifeless in the grave. According to Zophar, the wicked die young, when they least expect it.

When you survey both sacred and secular history, you discover that there are no ironclad rules that govern when either the wicked or the righteous will die. Generally speaking, people who ignore God’s laws are more vulnerable to problems that could lead to an early death. Sexual promiscuity, the use of narcotics (including alcohol and tobacco), and a reckless lifestyle can all help shorten a person’s life; but there is no guarantee that this will happen. It’s amazing how some godless people live to an old age. Perhaps this is the grace of God in giving them time to repent.

Zophar was not talking about the natural consequences of a wicked life, but the judgment of God on sinners. Zophar and his two friends were certain that Job was a hypocrite, that his pious life was only a veneer to cover his secret sins. In his second speech, Eliphaz will even name some of the sins that Job committed (22:5–9)! But God does not always judge hypocrites and other sinners immediately, and the death of a young person is no evidence that he or she was a hypocrite.

The godly Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Murray McCheyne died when he was only twenty-nine years old, and missionary William Whiting Borden (“Borden of Yale”) was only twenty-five years old when he died in Egypt. David Brainerd, saintly missionary to the Native Americans, was twenty-nine when he died. According to Zophar, these men must have been guilty of secret sin, and God took them at an early age.

Their pleasure is temporary (Job 20:12–19). Zophar uses eating as his basic image here. The wicked man enjoys sin the way people enjoy food, keeping it in his mouth where he can “taste it” before swallowing it. In fact, he enjoys sin so much, he can’t make himself swallow it! But eventually that delicious food in his mouth becomes poison in his system, and he becomes ill and vomits everything up. While enjoying his sin, he hasn’t noticed that he’s been bitten by a poisonous viper and is destined for death. In other words, sin carries with it both enjoyment and punishment; and if you want the one, you must also accept the other. The pleasures of sin are only for a season (Heb. 11:25).

But God’s judgment involves much more: the wicked man not only gets sick from his sin, but he does not enjoy the everyday blessings of life (Job 20:17). “He will not see the streams, the rivers flowing with honey and cream” (nkjv). The land of Canaan was a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Ex. 3:8; Lev. 20:24). Milk and honey were staples, not luxuries; and a land “flowing with milk and honey” would be productive and able to support the people. But the wicked man has lost his taste for basic foods, and nothing satisfies him anymore. His taste for sin has ruined his enjoyment of the fundamental blessings of life.

Using the image of eating, Zophar has made two points: what the wicked man swallows will make him sick and will take away his desire for the good things of life. He makes a third point in Job 20:18–19: the wicked man will not be able to enjoy (swallow down) some of the things he labored for. Because he acquired his wealth through sinning, that wealth will not satisfy him.

This certainly has been reflected in the lives of many people who have rejected Christ and devoted themselves to the pleasures of sin. The more they indulge, the more they crave; and the more they satisfy that craving, the less they enjoy. The less they enjoy, the more they have to sin in order to recapture the old thrills; and the more they sin, the more they destroy their ability to enjoy anything. To change the image, they have “blown all their fuses”; and the machinery of life no longer functions as it once did.

Their death is painful (Job 20:20–29). Not even his riches will be able to prevent death from coming to the wicked man (Job 20:20; see Ps. 49). While he is enjoying his prosperity, the wicked man will experience distress, misery, and God’s burning anger. God will “rain down his blows upon him” (Job 20: niv). The evil man will try to run away, but God will come at him with a sword and shoot at him with a bronzetipped arrow that will pierce him.

At this point in his speech, Zophar starts to sound like Bildad (Job 18). He describes the wicked man trying to escape God’s judgment. The arrows come at him as he runs through the darkness, and the fire falls around him. Then a flood catches up with him and destroys everything. But that’s not the end: The wicked man is finally dragged into court, where heaven and earth testify against him and find him guilty (20:27).