The Moth-Eaten Mansion: God's Inescapable Audit Text: Job 27:11-23
Introduction: Hijacking the Bad Argument
We come now to a fascinating and somewhat perplexing portion of Job's discourse. After roundly refuting his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and after they have run out of things to say, Zophar having failed to even show up for his third speech, Job takes the floor. And what does he do? He launches into a description of the fate of the wicked that sounds, on the surface, exactly like something his miserable comforters would say. It sounds like the very prosperity-gospel-in-reverse that they had been beating him with for twenty-some chapters.
So what is going on here? Is Job finally cracking? Has he given up and decided to just adopt their shallow theology? Not at all. Something far more brilliant is happening. Job is taking their argument, hijacking it, and driving it to its proper destination. His friends had been using the doctrine of divine retribution like a cudgel, arguing that since Job was suffering, he must be wicked. Their syllogism was simple: God punishes the wicked with immediate temporal disaster; Job is suffering immediate temporal disaster; therefore, Job is wicked. Job has already demolished this argument by pointing to the obvious fact that the wicked very often prosper, sometimes for their entire lives.
But Job is not a relativist. He is not throwing out the doctrine of divine justice altogether. He is rescuing it from the grubby hands of his friends, who had turned it into a flat, mechanical, and impersonal formula. Job is about to teach them, and us, about the power of God, which is not a vending machine principle but the sovereign, covenantal, and often inscrutable outworking of His perfect justice. He is saying, in effect, "You are right that there is a dreadful portion for the wicked, but your understanding of it is two-dimensional. You see the shadow, but you don't understand the substance. Let me instruct you." Job is not agreeing with their premise as it applies to him, but he is affirming the ultimate truth of God's judgment on a far grander and more terrifying scale than they had imagined.
He is about to paint a picture of the wicked man's ultimate end. It is a portrait of utter vanity, of frantic, meaningless accumulation, and of a final, terrifying audit by the Almighty. This is not a contradiction of what he has said before, but the necessary complement to it. Yes, the wicked may prosper, but their entire enterprise is built on sand, over a sinkhole.
The Text
I will instruct you in the power of God; What is with the Almighty I will not conceal.
Behold, all of you have seen it; Why then do you speak with utter vanity?
“This is the portion of a wicked man from God, And the inheritance which the ruthless receive from the Almighty.
Though his sons are many, they are destined for the sword; And his offspring will not be satisfied with bread.
His survivors will be buried because of the plague, And their widows will not be able to weep.
Though he piles up silver like dust And prepares garments as plentiful as the clay,
He may prepare it, but the righteous will wear it, And the innocent will divide the silver.
He has built his house like the moth, Or as a hut which the watchman has made.
He lies down rich, but never again; He opens his eyes, and it is no longer.
Terrors overtake him like many waters; A tempest steals him away in the night.
The east wind carries him away, and he goes, And it whirls him away from his place.
For it will hurl at him without sparing; He will surely try to flee from its power.
Men will clap their hands at him And will hiss him from his place.
(Job 27:11-23 LSB)
A Lesson in Divine Power (v. 11-12)
Job begins by positioning himself as the teacher, a stunning reversal of the dynamic thus far.
"I will instruct you in the power of God; What is with the Almighty I will not conceal. Behold, all of you have seen it; Why then do you speak with utter vanity?" (Job 27:11-12)
Job is telling his friends that they are looking at the world but not seeing it. They see the data points, the instances of suffering and prosperity, but they lack the theological grammar to arrange them into coherent sentences. They have seen God's power, but they have misinterpreted it. Their speeches have been "utter vanity," a puff of wind, because they have tried to reduce the Almighty to a predictable formula. Job promises to give them the unvarnished truth, what is "with the Almighty."
The "power of God" is not simply raw force. In Scripture, God's power is His sovereign ability to execute His covenantal purposes. Job's friends thought God's power was like a law of spiritual physics that could be charted and predicted. Job understands that God's power is personal, purposeful, and often paradoxical to our limited sight. He is about to explain the end of the wicked, which is the true demonstration of God's power over them, regardless of their temporary circumstances.
The Cursed Inheritance (v. 13-15)
Job now begins to describe the wicked man's "portion" and "inheritance." This is covenantal language. Every man receives an inheritance from God; the question is, which one?
"This is the portion of a wicked man from God, And the inheritance which the ruthless receive from the Almighty. Though his sons are many, they are destined for the sword; And his offspring will not be satisfied with bread. His survivors will be buried because of the plague, And their widows will not be able to weep." (Job 27:13-15 LSB)
The wicked man labors his whole life to build a legacy, a dynasty. He wants his name to continue. He multiplies sons, the ancient equivalent of a strong portfolio. But God's curse unravels it all. The very foundation of his legacy, his children, is what God targets. They are for the sword, for famine, for plague. This is a direct reversal of the covenantal blessings promised to the righteous (e.g., Psalm 127). The curse is so total that the normal rites of grief are obliterated. The widows will not weep, either because they are dead themselves or because the devastation is so complete that the structures of civilized mourning have collapsed. There is no one left to carry on the name or even to properly lament its passing. The legacy is not just ended; it is erased.
This is a profound statement about the nature of rebellion. The man who rebels against God in order to establish his own name ends with no name at all. He who seeks to build his own kingdom will see it turned to rubble. The ultimate judgment is not just that he dies, but that everything he lived for dies with him.
The Great Wealth Transfer (v. 16-17)
Next, Job turns to the wicked man's wealth, the second pillar of his self-made kingdom.
"Though he piles up silver like dust And prepares garments as plentiful as the clay, He may prepare it, but the righteous will wear it, And the innocent will divide the silver." (Job 27:16-17 LSB)
The wicked man is fantastically successful in his own eyes. He accumulates wealth with contemptuous ease, piling up silver like common dust. He has more fine garments than he could ever wear. He is a picture of worldly success. But Job reveals the divine irony at the heart of his labor. He is not actually working for himself. He is merely a temporary steward, a grubby stock boy, piling up goods in a warehouse for the true owners. God has foreordained a great wealth transfer. "The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous" (Proverbs 13:22).
This is a fundamental principle of God's economic order. The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. He gives wealth and He takes it away. The ungodly may be permitted to extract and accumulate it for a time, but they have no ultimate title deed to it. God, in His own time and in His own way, will see to it that the wealth of His enemies is transferred into the hands of His children. This is not a promise to be claimed presumptuously, as some do, but it is a bedrock statement of God's ultimate justice. The wicked man is working for the righteous, and he doesn't even know it. His whole life is a vanity, a frantic effort that will only serve to bless the very people he despises.
The Moth's House and the Vanishing Riches (v. 18-19)
Job now employs two powerful similes to describe the utter fragility of the wicked man's security.
"He has built his house like the moth, Or as a hut which the watchman has made. He lies down rich, but never again; He opens his eyes, and it is no longer." (Job 27:18-19 LSB)
His house, his estate, his dynasty, which looks to the world like a granite fortress, is in reality like the cocoon of a moth. It is a temporary structure, spun out of its own substance, destined to be broken and left behind. Or it is like a watchman's hut, a flimsy lean-to built in a field for a single harvest season, with no foundation, meant to be abandoned. All his efforts to build something permanent are an illusion.
And his end comes with shocking suddenness. "He lies down rich, but never again." One night he is secure, counting his silver, admiring his garments. The next morning, it is all gone. "He opens his eyes, and it is no longer." This is the terrifying precarity of godless wealth. It has no anchor in the covenant of God, and so it can be swept away in a moment. This is what Jesus warned about when He told the parable of the rich fool who planned to build bigger barns, only to hear God say, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20).
The Storm of Judgment (v. 20-23)
The sermon culminates in a terrifying description of the final, active judgment of God.
"Terrors overtake him like many waters; A tempest steals him away in the night. The east wind carries him away, and he goes, And it whirls him away from his place... For it will hurl at him without sparing; He will surely try to flee from its power. Men will clap their hands at him And will hiss him from his place." (Job 27:20-23 LSB)
The end is not a peaceful fading away. It is violent and terrifying. God's judgment comes like a flash flood, a tempest in the night, a scorching east wind from the desert. These are not impersonal forces of nature; this is personal. The wind "hurls at him without sparing." God is the one casting the spears. The wicked man, who spent his life running from God, now tries to flee from His power, but there is nowhere to go. There is no shelter from the God who made the shelters.
And his end is not private. It is a public spectacle. The legacy he wanted to build ends in public disgrace. "Men will clap their hands at him and will hiss him from his place." The applause he sought in life turns to mocking applause at his downfall. The respect he craved is replaced by the hiss of utter contempt. He who lived for the approval of men is damned by it in the end. He is exposed as a fraud, a fool, and his whole life is revealed to be the vanity that Job declared it to be.
The Portion of the Righteous
Job has masterfully described the portion of the wicked. But in all of this, we must see the shadow of the gospel. For there was one who, though He was righteous, took the portion of the wicked upon Himself.
Jesus Christ was destined for the sword. His offspring, His disciples, were scattered and had no bread. His survivors were few, and His own mother could barely weep at the foot of the cross. He was stripped of His garments, which were divided by His enemies. He had no house, no place to lay His head, less than a watchman's hut. He lay down in the richness of His own divine glory and awoke to poverty and humiliation. Terrors overtook Him in the garden like a flood. A tempest of divine wrath stole Him away on the cross. The wind of God's judgment was hurled at Him without sparing, and He did not flee from its power.
And men clapped their hands at Him. They mocked Him, they scorned Him, they hissed Him out of his place, crying "Crucify!" He took the entire curse described in this chapter, the full and complete portion of the wicked man from God.
And why? So that the great wealth transfer could truly take place. He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9). He was stripped, so that we might be clothed in His righteousness. His inheritance was the sword, so that our inheritance might be eternal life. His house was destroyed and in three days rebuilt, so that we might have a permanent dwelling place in the household of God. He took the portion of the wicked so that we, the truly wicked, might receive the portion of the only righteous Son.
Therefore, the wicked man of Job 27 is every man outside of Christ. He can build his moth-eaten mansion and pile up his dusty silver, but the storm is coming. But for those who are in Christ, we have an inheritance that can never be shaken, a treasure that can never be stolen, and a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.