The wicked will not experience the blessings of this life which, according to Zophar, God reserves for the righteous and those he wishes to reward on earth. The streams are full of refreshment as they water the fields and are an emblem of hope and plenty.
God does deprive the wicked of the pleasure that they expect to gain from their wickedness and they discover that what seemed to be within their grasp has eluded them, but it was pure imagination and suspicion for Zophar to think that Job was guilty of all these things. The friends had no trace of evidence from his previous period of life to draw this conclusion. Suspicion is able to manufacture all manner of evils that do not exist, and in dealing with others we must be very careful not to let our imagination go beyond the evidence.
This unwarranted attack on Job resembles the attack Satan launches on us at times. When we go through hard times, he menaces us with the thought that all God is depriving us of all good because he is against us. We find that we cannot appreciate spiritual things. When we are down, we may even lose our desire to go to the house of God. Satan suggests, ‘You don’t want to go to Bible study, you have had no taste for it for some time.’ The depressed person becomes convinced that there will be no more good for him.
There are a variety of translations of verse 21 with quite different senses. Some understand Zophar to say that the wicked man has nothing left to eat himself and therefore his well-being will not last. Others see this as retribution: after he has eaten, there is nothing left for others to eat because he does not share any of what he has, and therefore his well-being will not last. The KJV keeps the ambiguity of the original and leaves the matter undecided. Certainly God marks those who keep all for themselves and do not think of others. For this reason John the Baptist instructed those with two coats to give to those with none.