Commentary - Job 24:18-25

Bird's-eye view

In this section of his speech, Job appears to shift his argument, or perhaps he is quoting the tragically simplistic theology of his friends in order to refute it. The language here describes the swift and certain demise of the wicked, which sounds a great deal more like the arguments of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar than what Job has been maintaining. Job has been arguing from his own bitter experience that the wicked often prosper, and that God's justice is not immediately apparent in this life. So what is going on? It is most likely that Job is setting up a straw man, articulating the neat and tidy retribution theology of his counselors. He describes the wicked man as a fleeting thing, cursed, forgotten, and ultimately broken by God's power. He paints the picture his friends want to see: a world where sin is immediately and obviously punished.

But the speech culminates in a defiant challenge. After laying out this conventional wisdom, he asks, "who can prove me a liar?" This suggests that he is presenting their view only to knock it down, to show that it does not square with the brutal realities of the world he sees around him. The passage, therefore, is a masterful piece of rhetoric. Job demonstrates that he understands their position perfectly well, but he finds it to be a worthless and dishonest account of God's ways. The wicked man's life may be transient in the grand scheme of eternity, but in the here and now, he often seems secure, and God's judgment is hidden. Job's complaint remains: the world does not operate according to the simple formulas of the righteous.

Outline

Context In Job

This passage comes in the midst of the third and final cycle of speeches between Job and his three friends. Job is responding to Eliphaz's last speech (Job 22), in which Eliphaz doubled down on his accusation that Job is a great sinner whose suffering is a direct result of his wickedness. Job's reply in chapters 23 and 24 is a powerful lament and a continued wrestling with the problem of divine justice. In chapter 23, Job longs to find God to plead his case, confident of his own integrity. In the first part of chapter 24, Job details at length the brazen atrocities of the wicked, who oppress the poor, murder, and steal, all while God seems to do nothing (Job 24:1-17). This sets the stage for our passage. The sudden shift in tone in verse 18, describing the swift downfall of the wicked, is therefore jarring. It stands in stark contrast to everything Job has just said. This is why it is best understood not as Job's own settled conviction, but as him ironically voicing the dogma of his friends before he ultimately dismisses it as worthless speech.

Key Issues

The Swift Fall of the Wicked

One of the central tensions in the book of Job, and indeed in all of Scripture, is the relationship between sin and suffering, righteousness and blessing. Job's friends operate on a very straightforward, almost mechanical, understanding of this relationship. They believe in what we might call a "vending machine" theology: put in a good deed, get a blessing; put in a sin, get a calamity. The Bible does teach that God is not mocked, and that a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7). The book of Proverbs is filled with this kind of practical wisdom. The problem with Job's counselors is not that they are entirely wrong, but that they are woodenly and simplistically right. They have taken a general principle and turned it into an inflexible, ironclad law that admits no exceptions and has no room for the mysterious purposes of God.

Job, sitting on his ash heap, knows better. His own life is a screaming refutation of their neat system. And so, when he begins to speak their language in this passage, we should be suspicious. He is describing a world where justice is immediate and obvious. The wicked are like foam on the water, here one moment and gone the next. The grave swallows them up as surely as the summer heat melts the snow. This is the world as it should be, the world his friends insist it is. But Job's final challenge shows that he believes this picture is a lie. The reality is that God's justice often operates on a much longer timeline than we would prefer, and for reasons that are entirely His own.

Verse by Verse Commentary

18 “They are insignificant on the surface of the water; Their portion is cursed on the earth. They do not turn toward the vineyards.

Job begins this section by describing the wicked man as something light and transient, like a twig or foam floating downstream. He is insignificant, easily swept away. This is the classic picture of the wicked man's fate in Scripture (cf. Psalm 1:4). His "portion," his inheritance and livelihood in the land, is cursed. He will find no lasting enjoyment or prosperity. The reference to not turning toward the vineyards is a picture of this curse; he will not enjoy the fruit of his labor, the symbol of celebration and abundance. He is a man with no future and no stability. This is exactly what Bildad or Zophar would say, and Job is saying it with what we must assume is a thick layer of irony.

19 Drought and heat seize the snow waters, So does Sheol those who have sinned.

The imagery here is powerful and absolute. Just as the fierce summer sun inevitably melts and evaporates the snow that runs down the wadis, so the grave (Sheol) inevitably seizes those who have sinned. The process is natural, unavoidable, and complete. There is no escape. This is a statement of fact, and it is theologically true in the ultimate sense. The wages of sin is death. But Job's point throughout the book has been that this "seizing" by Sheol often happens after a long, prosperous, and comfortable life, not in the immediate, retributive fashion his friends imagine.

20 A mother will forget him; The worm feasts sweetly till he is no longer remembered. And unrighteousness will be broken like a tree.

The totality of the wicked man's destruction is laid out here. His own mother, the one who brought him into the world, will forget him. This is a profound statement of his complete erasure from memory. In the grave, the worm will feast on his corpse, a grim but sweet meal for the decomposers. His memory among men will vanish. His entire enterprise of unrighteousness, which may have seemed as strong and imposing as a great tree, will be snapped and broken. Again, this is the orthodox view of the final end of the wicked. But the timing is everything. Job knows that many wicked men are remembered for generations, with monuments built to their name.

21 He feeds on the barren woman who does not give birth And does no good for the widow.

Here Job briefly interrupts his description of the wicked man's fate to remind us of his character. He is a predator who exploits the most vulnerable. He "feeds on" or "preys upon" the barren woman, who had no children to protect or provide for her. He likewise refuses to do good for the widow. These are classic examples of covenant-breaking wickedness in the Old Testament. God repeatedly identifies Himself as the defender of the widow, the orphan, and the barren. To harm them is to poke a finger in the eye of God Himself. This verse grounds the justice of the wicked man's destruction in his specific, heinous sins.

22 But He drags off the mighty by His power; He rises, but no one believes in his life.

The pronoun shifts here. "He" now refers to God. It is God who, by His sovereign power, ultimately "drags off" these mighty wicked men. Though the wicked man "rises" in power and prominence, he lives a precarious existence. No one, perhaps not even himself, can be sure of his life from one day to the next. This speaks to the internal anxiety that must accompany a life of tyranny and oppression. But it also speaks to the fact that God holds his life in His hands. God is the one who allows him to rise, and God is the one who will eventually pull him down.

23 He provides them with security, and they are supported; And His eyes are on their ways.

This verse is the pivot and contains the central problem for Job. God is the one who gives these wicked men a sense of security. He is the one who allows them to be "supported." This is a profoundly disturbing thought for those who want a simple, black-and-white world. God is not a passive observer of wickedness; He is actively involved in sustaining the lives of wicked men for His own purposes. And all the while, "His eyes are on their ways." He is not ignorant of their sin. He sees everything. This is the mystery of divine providence. God is sovereignly orchestrating all things, even the temporary prosperity of those who hate Him, and He is doing so with full knowledge of their evil.

24 They are exalted a little while, then they are gone; Moreover, they are brought low and like everything gathered up; Even like the heads of grain they are cut off.

Here Job returns to the theme of the transience of the wicked. Their exaltation is for "a little while." In the grand sweep of eternity, their strutting and fretting on the stage is but a brief moment. Then they are gone. They are brought low, gathered up like weeds for the fire, and cut off like the heads of grain at harvest time. The harvest imagery is common for judgment. God, the divine farmer, will eventually come and reap the earth, separating the wheat from the chaff, and cutting down the wicked. This is true, but for Job, that "little while" can feel like an eternity.

25 Now if it is not so, who can prove me a liar, And make my speech worthless?”

This is the punchline. After this eloquent summary of what appears to be his friends' position, Job throws down the gauntlet. He challenges anyone to refute him. But what is he challenging them to refute? Given the context of the entire chapter, he is not defending the simplistic view he has just outlined. Rather, he is challenging them to deny that his real argument, the one from the first part of the chapter, is the true state of affairs. His real argument is that the wicked prosper and God is hidden. By ending with this challenge, he is essentially saying, "This neat little picture of swift justice I've just painted? We all know it's not that simple. And if you think it is, prove me wrong. Show me how my description of the real world is a lie." No one can, and so their speeches are rendered worthless.

Application

This passage forces us to confront the temptation of demanding that God's justice conform to our timetables and our expectations. Like Job's friends, we are often tempted to draw straight, clean lines between sin and suffering in this life. When we see a wicked man prosper, we are tempted to doubt God's justice or His power. When we see a righteous person suffer, we are tempted to look for some secret sin, as Job's friends did. But Job teaches us that the ways of God are not so simple.

God is absolutely sovereign, and His eyes are on all the ways of men. He gives security to the wicked for a season, for His own inscrutable purposes. He is weaving a story that is far more complex and glorious than our little morality plays. The application for us is to learn to trust God in the dark. We must affirm with the psalmist that the wicked are set in slippery places and that their end is destruction, but we must also have the patience to wait for God's appointed time. Our faith is not in a formula, but in a person. The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of this mystery. There, the most righteous man who ever lived endured the greatest suffering, and the most wicked act in human history became the means of salvation for the world. God's justice is not simple arithmetic; it is the profound and glorious wisdom of the gospel. We are called to rest in that wisdom, especially when the circumstances of our lives, like Job's, seem to scream that it makes no sense at all.