The Terrible Portion of the Wicked Text: Job 20:22-29
Introduction: Miserable Comforters and Tidy Heresies
We live in an age that loves simple formulas for complex realities. Our therapeutic culture wants five steps to a happy marriage, and our political discourse demands that every problem have a villain who can be voted out of office. And the church is by no means immune. We have our own versions of this. One of the most persistent is what you might call vending machine theology. If you put in a coin of righteousness, you get out a candy bar of blessing. If you put in a coin of sin, you get out a bitter lemon of affliction. It is neat, it is tidy, and it is almost entirely wrong.
This is the very error that Job’s friends fall into, and it is why Job rightly calls them “miserable comforters.” They are not miserable comforters because they say things that are untrue. Much of what they say, taken as abstract theological propositions, is perfectly sound. God does judge the wicked. Sin does have consequences. The problem is not with the individual statements so much as with the heartless, arrogant, and blind application of them. They are using true principles as a club to beat a righteous man. They have a theology that is too small for the God of the whirlwind, a God whose ways are not our ways.
In our text today, we have the conclusion of the second speech from Zophar the Naamathite. And of the three friends, Zophar is perhaps the most brutish and dogmatic. He is utterly convinced that he has the world figured out. He has God in a box, and that box is labeled “Retributive Justice for Dummies.” He lays out, in lurid and graphic detail, the terrible fate of the wicked man. And as we read it, we must acknowledge that he is describing a reality that the rest of Scripture affirms. The wicked will not ultimately prosper. But Zophar’s speech is not offered as a general warning; it is a thinly veiled, brutal assault on Job himself. He is painting a picture of a man getting his just deserts, and he intends for Job to see his own reflection in the canvas.
So as we walk through this, we must do two things. First, we must see the truth in what Zophar says about the ultimate trajectory of wickedness. Second, and more importantly, we must see the profound error in his application, and in so doing, learn to distrust all tidy, man-made systems for explaining the sovereign work of God in the world. God’s justice is not a simple machine; it is a roaring fire.
The Text
In the fullness of his plenty he will be confined; The hand of everyone who is troubled will come against him.
So it will be that he fills his belly, And God will send His burning anger on him And will rain it on him while he is eating.
He may flee from the iron weapon, But the bronze bow will pierce him.
It is drawn forth and comes out of his back, Even the glittering point from his gall; Bouts of dread come upon him.
Complete darkness is held in reserve for his treasures; A fire unfanned will devour him; It will consume the survivor in his tent.
The heavens will reveal his iniquity, And the earth will rise up against him.
The increase of his house will depart; His possessions will flow away in the day of His anger.
This is the wicked man’s portion from God, Even the inheritance decreed to him by God.
(Job 20:22-29 LSB)
The Sudden Reversal (v. 22-23)
Zophar begins with a picture of prosperity that suddenly curdles into misery.
"In the fullness of his plenty he will be confined; The hand of everyone who is troubled will come against him. So it will be that he fills his belly, And God will send His burning anger on him And will rain it on him while he is eating." (Job 20:22-23)
This is a powerful image of claustrophobic justice. The wicked man reaches the pinnacle of his success, the very "fullness of his plenty," and it is at that precise moment that the walls close in. The world he has built for his comfort becomes his prison. His sin finds him out. The very people he has troubled and oppressed rise up against him. Zophar is arguing that the universe has a built-in moral recoil. You cannot oppress others without that oppression eventually boomeranging back on you.
And notice the source of this judgment. It is not just a natural consequence; it is a direct act of God. Just as the man sits down to enjoy the feast he has gained through his wickedness, as he "fills his belly," God Himself sends the judgment. The language is visceral. God will "rain" His burning anger upon him "while he is eating." The moment of his greatest satisfaction becomes the moment of his utter destruction. This is not wrong. The Bible is filled with such warnings. Think of the rich fool in the parable, who builds bigger barns for his stuff, only to have his soul required of him that very night. Think of Belshazzar, feasting and drinking from the vessels of God’s temple, when the hand appears and writes his doom on the wall.
Zophar’s theology is correct in its general principle. The error is his assumption that he can read the calendar of God's judgment. He sees Job, a man who was once full and is now confined, and he draws a straight, unwavering line from A to B. He assumes that Job's suffering is the "rain" of God's anger for some hidden sin. He is a spiritual diagnostician committing malpractice on a cosmic scale.
The Inescapable Arrow (v. 24-25)
Next, Zophar describes the futility of trying to escape God's judgment.
"He may flee from the iron weapon, But the bronze bow will pierce him. It is drawn forth and comes out of his back, Even the glittering point from his gall; Bouts of dread come upon him." (Job 20:24-25 LSB)
The wicked man is a fugitive from divine justice. He sees the obvious threat, the "iron weapon," and he dodges it. He is clever, resourceful, and thinks he can outrun God. But in fleeing one judgment, he runs directly into another, more deadly one. The "bronze bow" finds him. This is the principle that the prophet Amos articulates: "As if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him" (Amos 5:19). There is no escape.
The imagery is graphic and terrifying. The arrow is not a flesh wound. It goes straight through him, coming "out of his back." The "glittering point" emerges from his very "gall," his vital organs. This is a fatal blow, and it brings with it "bouts of dread." This is not just physical torment, but psychological and spiritual terror. The conscience, long suppressed, awakens to the horror of his situation. He is not just dying; he is dying under the righteous wrath of God.
Again, is this true? Absolutely. The author of Hebrews tells us that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). But Zophar is not just teaching theology. He is looking at Job, a man pierced with sores from head to toe, a man whose life has been shattered, and he is saying, "See? The bronze bow has found you. This dread you feel is the terror of the wicked." He is a prosecutor, not a friend.
The Devouring Fire (v. 26-28)
The judgment is total, consuming everything the wicked man values.
"Complete darkness is held in reserve for his treasures; A fire unfanned will devour him; It will consume the survivor in his tent. The heavens will reveal his iniquity, And the earth will rise up against him. The increase of his house will depart; His possessions will flow away in the day of His anger." (Job 20:26-28 LSB)
The man’s treasures, the things he lived for, are consigned to "complete darkness." The wealth he hoarded is useless. Then a "fire unfanned" will devour him. This is a supernatural fire, a fire not started by human hands. This is the fire of God's own wrath. And it is not limited to him; it consumes the "survivor in his tent." His legacy is erased. His entire household is judged.
Zophar then calls the entire cosmos as a witness against this man. "The heavens will reveal his iniquity, and the earth will rise up against him." There is no place to hide. Creation itself, which groans under the weight of wickedness, will participate in the judgment. His sin, which he thought was secret, will be exposed on a cosmic screen for all to see. All his accumulated wealth, the "increase of his house," will be swept away in the flood of God's anger. It is a picture of total, unmitigated, and public ruin.
This is all intended to describe Job’s situation precisely. Job's treasures were gone. A fire from heaven had burned his sheep and servants. His children, the survivors in his tent, were dead. Zophar is twisting the knife, using the facts of Job’s tragedy as evidence for his prosecution. He is saying, "The whole world can see your sin, Job, because the whole world can see your punishment."
The Divine Decree (v. 29)
Zophar concludes with his grand theological summary, his mic-drop moment.
"This is the wicked man’s portion from God, Even the inheritance decreed to him by God." (Job 20:29 LSB)
Here is the central plank of his argument. This terrible fate is not an accident. It is not bad luck. It is a "portion" and an "inheritance" specifically "decreed" by God for the wicked. Zophar is a staunch Calvinist when it comes to the damnation of his enemies. He believes in a sovereign God who meticulously ordains the downfall of the unrighteous. And in this, he is not wrong. God is sovereign over judgment.
But his application is a damnable heresy. He has appointed himself as the one who gets to read the secret decrees of God off the back of a man’s suffering. This is the foundational sin of the miserable comforters. They presume to know the mind of God. They flatten the rich, complex, and often mysterious providence of God into a two-dimensional cartoon. They cannot imagine a world where a righteous man suffers, not for his own sin, but for the glory of God. They cannot imagine a God who would allow His servant to be tested in the crucible, not for punishment, but for purification and vindication. Their God is too small, too predictable, too much like them.
The Portion Christ Received
So where does this leave us? We must see that Zophar’s lurid description of the wicked man’s portion finds its ultimate fulfillment in one place: the cross of Jesus Christ. All the horrors that Zophar describes were poured out, in full measure, upon the only truly innocent man who ever lived.
Was He confined in the fullness of His plenty? Yes, the Lord of glory was arrested, bound, and nailed to a tree. Did God send His burning anger upon Him? Yes, on the cross, He who knew no sin was made to be sin for us, and He bore the full measure of the Father's wrath. Was He pierced? Yes, the spear went into His side. Did bouts of dread come upon Him? Yes, in the garden, His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, and on the cross, He cried out in dereliction, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Was He consumed by a fire unfanned? The fire of God’s holy wrath against our sin consumed Him. Did the heavens reveal iniquity? Yes, our iniquity was laid on Him, and He was publicly shamed. Did the earth rise up against Him? Yes, the rulers of the earth conspired against the Lord and His Anointed. Was this His decreed portion? Absolutely. It was "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God" that He was delivered up (Acts 2:23).
Jesus took the wicked man's portion so that wicked men like us could receive the righteous man's inheritance. Zophar saw the judgment, but he had no category for grace. He had no room in his tidy system for a substitute. He could never have imagined that the answer to Job's suffering was not a theological formula, but a person. The answer was a Redeemer who would one day stand upon the earth.
Therefore, when we suffer, we must reject the satanic whispers of the miserable comforters, whether they come from outside or from within our own hearts. Our suffering is not necessarily the direct result of some specific sin. Rather, for the believer in Christ, our suffering is an instrument in the hands of our sovereign Father, who is conforming us to the image of His Son. He is teaching us to trust Him in the whirlwind, to know that even when we cannot see His hand, we can trust His heart. For He is the God who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. How will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?