Job 21:18 Commentary and Bible Study

Given the consideration above, verse 18 should probably be rendered as a question: ‘How often are they as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away?’ Very seldom, would be the implied answer. Several versions add the words ‘You say’, or similar, to the start of verse 19, making these not Job’s words, but those of the friends repeated back to them, and expressing an idea that Job very much disagrees with. The verses that follow must also be rendered differently from the KJV to support this. If this is the right interpretation of the verse, Job is referring to what was said by Zophar: ‘His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods’ (Job 20:10). This is their answer to the few that seem to get away with evil; God punishes their children instead. They think that rewarding the children is as good as rewarding the father. Nonsense, says Job; he dismisses this idea outright. Following this, verse 20 expresses the idea that justice ought to punish the man himself and not his children, as the friends foolishly suggest: ‘Let his eyes see his destruction, And let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.’ In support of this verse 21 is rendered to argue that a man is not punished by what happens to his children after he is gone from the world, for he knows or cares nothing about what happens to them, either good or bad. ‘For what does he care about his household after him, When the number of his months is cut in half?’ (NKJV). It is too easy for a man to say, at least I won’t have to suffer, and even the godly Hezekiah reasoned in this way (2 Kings 20:19). He is not denying that this ever happens, or that God should not punish the children of the wicked. The second commandment says that God does exactly this (Exodus 20:5). He argues only that this does not fit with the friends’ thesis that there is complete justice in this world. The friends need these various side-alleys to escape the problems associated with their position. But Job’s main point is that this is not the time of comprehensive divine judgement. He believes God’s hand is stayed at the moment, and therefore this is largely a world of injustice and inequality.