The Great Leveler and the Greater Judge Text: Job 21:23-26
Introduction: The Offense of a Tidy Worldview
We live in an age that desperately wants the universe to be a vending machine. If you put in a coin of righteousness, you expect a bag of chips, a healthy portfolio, and a comfortable life to come rattling down the chute. If you put in a coin of wickedness, you expect, at the very least, a good, swift kick from the machine. This is the essence of all karma, all prosperity gospels, and all the tidy, wooden-headed theology that Job's friends were peddling. They saw Job's calamity and, working backward with their flawless but misapplied logic, concluded he must have inserted the wrong kind of coin.
The problem with this vending machine theology is that it is profoundly unbiblical, and the book of Job is God's great sledgehammer for smashing it to pieces. Job, sitting on his ash heap, scraping his sores with a piece of pottery, looks out at the world and sees something that offends every neat and tidy system. He sees that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. More than that, he sees that the sun seems to shine with a particular brilliance on the unjust, while the just are left shivering in the storm. The wicked prosper, they grow old, they see their children established, and then they die quietly in their beds.
This is a profound theological crisis for anyone whose faith is built on the immediate, observable returns of their piety. Job is not denying God's justice. He is wrestling with God's timing. He is pointing out the glaring discrepancy between the promises of a moral universe and the raw data of human experience. And in the passage before us, he brings his argument to its final, earthy conclusion. He points to the one destination that no man, rich or poor, righteous or wicked, can finally avoid. He points to the dust.
What Job is doing here is not apostasy. It is honest complaint. He is refusing to flatter God with lies, as his friends were doing. He is laying the raw, bleeding facts of the case before the Judge of all the earth and asking, "What gives?" This is a necessary stage in the life of faith. We must be disillusioned with our simplistic formulas before we can be truly illumined by the profound and mysterious wisdom of God, a wisdom that does not offer easy answers but offers Himself.
The Text
One dies in his full strength,
Being wholly carefree and at ease;
His sides are filled out with fat,
And the marrow of his bones is moist,
But another dies with a bitter soul,
Never even eats anything good.
Together they lie down in the dust,
And worms cover them.
(Job 21:23-26 LSB)
The Easy Exit of the Wicked (v. 23-24)
Job begins by painting a picture that would have been particularly galling to his friends and is still a stumbling block for many believers today.
"One dies in his full strength, Being wholly carefree and at ease; His sides are filled out with fat, And the marrow of his bones is moist," (Job 21:23-24)
This is a portrait of a man who has won at the game of life, at least according to every worldly metric. He dies "in his full strength," not wasted by disease or withered by famine. There is no long, drawn-out suffering. He simply cashes in his chips at the height of his powers. He is "wholly carefree and at ease." His conscience doesn't seem to bother him. He isn't tormented by his sins or worried about a coming judgment. He is tranquil, content, and secure.
Job then gives us the physical evidence of this prosperity. "His sides are filled out with fat." In a culture where hunger was a constant threat, this was the ultimate sign of wealth and success. This man has never missed a meal. He is not just surviving; he is feasting. The description goes deeper, to the very core of his being: "the marrow of his bones is moist." This is a Hebrew idiom for vibrant health and vitality. He is flourishing from the inside out. He is the picture of a man blessed by God, except for one small detail: he is wicked.
This is Job's challenge. He is saying to his friends, "Look around you. Your system doesn't account for this man." This man's life and death are a direct contradiction to the idea that God runs the world like a small-town sheriff, immediately arresting every lawbreaker. God's patience with the wicked, His willingness to let them prosper, is a severe mercy. It is a mercy because it is meant to lead them to repentance, but it is severe because it scandalizes those who want justice now. But we must understand that God's timetable is not ours. He is playing a much longer game than we can see from our vantage point on the ash heap.
The Hard End of the Afflicted (v. 25)
In stark contrast to the easy death of the prosperous sinner, Job now describes the end of another man.
"But another dies with a bitter soul, Never even eats anything good." (Job 21:25 LSB)
This is the other side of the ledger, and it is a brutal accounting. This man's life is the polar opposite of the first. He dies not in strength, but in bitterness of soul. His life has been a long series of disappointments, pains, and sorrows. He has known nothing but grief. His soul is steeped in bitterness, like a garment soaked in gall.
And his physical condition matches his spiritual misery. He "never even eats anything good." This is a man who has known only poverty, scarcity, and want. While the other man was feasting, this man was starving. While the other man's bones were moist with marrow, this man's were dry and brittle. He has tasted none of the sweetness of life. And we are left to assume, given the context of Job's own situation, that this is a man who may well be righteous. This is Job's own experience projected onto the screen. He is the man with the bitter soul.
This is the reality that wrecks all simplistic theologies. It is the problem of suffering in its rawest form. Why does God allow one man to have everything and die peacefully, while another has nothing and dies miserably? To ask the question is to be human. To demand an answer that fits into our tidy little box is to be arrogant. God will later answer Job from the whirlwind, not by explaining the mechanics of His providence, but by revealing the majesty of His person. The answer to suffering is not a formula; it is a Person. It is the Lord.
The Common Grave (v. 26)
After drawing this sharp contrast between two lives and two deaths, Job brings them to the same place. This is the punchline of his argument.
"Together they lie down in the dust, And worms cover them." (Job 21:26 LSB)
This is the great equalizer. For all their differences in life, in death they are indistinguishable. The fat, carefree millionaire and the bitter, starving pauper end up in the same six feet of dirt. "Together they lie down in the dust." The grave makes no distinction. It is the ultimate democracy. The worms that "cover them" are not picky eaters. They will feast on the well-fed flesh of the rich man just as readily as the emaciated flesh of the poor man.
From a purely materialistic worldview, this is the end of the story. This is the ultimate absurdity. Life is a chaotic, unjust mess, and then you die and get eaten by worms. Full stop. If this is all there is, then Job's complaint is more than justified; it is the final word on the matter. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we are worm food. This is the logical conclusion of atheism.
But Job, even in his darkest moment, knows this is not the final word. He is arguing from observation, but his faith, though battered, is not dead. We know this because just two chapters earlier, he made one of the most glorious confessions of faith in all of Scripture: "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19:25-26). Job understands that the dust is not the final destination. The grave is a waiting room, not a final residence.
The View from the Other Side of the Dust
So what are we to make of this? Job's observation is accurate. Death, considered by itself, is the great leveler. It treats all men alike. But the Christian faith does not consider death by itself. We look at death through the lens of the empty tomb.
The New Testament picks up Job's observation and radicalizes it. The writer of Hebrews tells us that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). The dust is not the end. The worms are not the final arbiters. After the common experience of death comes the great act of separation: the judgment.
At that judgment, the tables will be turned with a divine and terrible irony. The man who died full and at ease, who never gave a thought to God, will awaken to an eternity of want. Jesus tells the story of a rich man, much like the one Job describes, who feasted every day. He died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw the poor beggar Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. And he cried out for a single drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:19-24). The man whose bones were moist with marrow now begs for a drop of water.
And the man who died with a bitter soul, who never ate anything good, if his trust was in the Lord, will awaken to the great feast. He will be invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. He will sit at a table where sorrow and sighing will flee away, and God Himself will wipe every tear from his eyes. The one who never ate anything good will feast on the goodness of God for all eternity.
This is why we cannot judge God's justice based on the snapshot of this life. We are reading one page of a great novel and complaining that the plot doesn't make sense. God is the author, and He has promised that He will tie up every loose end. The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of this principle. On the cross, the only truly righteous man died with the most bitter soul imaginable, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He experienced the ultimate injustice so that we, the unjust, could experience the ultimate grace.
Therefore, when we see the wicked prosper, we should not despair. We should pity them. Their prosperity is fattening them for the day of slaughter. And when we, or our righteous brothers, suffer, we should not lose heart. Our momentary, light affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. The dust is real, and the worms are hungry. But our Redeemer lives, and because He lives, we too shall live. The grave is not a period at the end of the sentence of our lives; it is merely a comma.