Job’s Second Reply to Zophar: The Good Life: Job: The Wisdom of the Cross [Job 21]

{pray}

In 1971 a sitcom called “The Good Life” a aired for one season on NBC. It was a comedy about a couple that wanted to escape the rat race of life by leaving the comforts and conveniences of modern society and turned to a radically eco-conscious lifestyle. So they turned their suburban home into a self-sufficient farm, much to the displeasure of their very suburban neighbors.

The fun part about the comedy was the play on the meaning of “good”. Was it the good life…it certainly wasn’t easy being self-sufficient. Was their life morally good or enjoyably good or some unpredictable combination of the two? Although it was a sitcom, it touched on an important question. Do those who live morally good lives also enjoy pleasurably good lives? The flip side of that is: do those whose lifestyle is bad have a miserably bad time in life? The System of the comforters says both answers will be yes.

One of the comforters’ major themes in this second cycle of speeches has been that bad things happen to bad people. Eliphaz has insisted on this: “The wicked man writhes in pain all his days” (15:20). Bildad agrees: “Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out” (18:5). Zophar rams the message home: “… the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless but for a moment” (20:5). We have seen that their descriptions of the fate of the wicked have many verbal echoes of the way Job has described his own condition. They thus imply that Job must be one of the wicked.

In his first two speeches in this cycle (16, 17; 19) Job has majored on his struggles with God and reached out in faith to his conviction that God is just and that there will be a mediator for him in Heaven. Now at the end of the cycle he answers the comforters head-on.

In a nutshell his argument is this: “You say that bad things happen to bad people. I agree that ultimately bad things will happen to bad people. But you only have to look around to see that in this life very good things often happen to bad people. My implication is, if the wicked do not yet get the judgment they deserve, then is it not possible that the righteous may experience in this life bad things they do not deserve, before their ultimate vindication? And is it not therefore possible that I, Job, am righteous, and your deduction is utterly false?”

Job’s argument is important for us in our pastoral engagement with others. We cannot deduce the spiritual state of a man or woman from their current happiness or prosperity or their present sufferings. The fact of this needs to be burned onto our consciousness, lest we slip into the errors of Job’s comforters.

We may divide Job’s argument into three main parts. After an introduction (vv. 1–6), he observes that wicked people are often happy (vv. 7–16) before noting the flip side—wicked people are rarely punished (vv. 17–26). Finally (vv. 27–33) he makes the point that they prosper even in death. Then he concludes (v. 34) with a final rebuke to his friends.

Introduction (vv. 1–6)

Then Job answered and said:

“Keep listening to my words,

and let this be your comfort.

Bear with me, and I will speak,

and after I have spoken, mock on.

As for me, is my complaint against man?

Why should I not be impatient?

Look at me and be appalled,

and lay your hand over your mouth.

When I remember, I am dismayed,

and shuddering seizes my flesh.” (vv. 1–6)

Verse 2 is ironic: “I wish you would shut up and be silent, as you were at the start [2:11–13]; anything would be better than the painful nonsense you are spouting at me [v. 34]!” The words “your comfort” (v. 2b) are ambiguous in English but clearly have the sense of the consolation that his friends give him rather than any comfort they might receive from Job. He pleads for a few moments of silence on their part to listen to what he has to say before, no doubt, they “mock on” (v. 3).

Job’s complaint is not ultimately against them but against God (v. 4a), and for this reason it is not surprising he is “troubled” (v. 4b KJV; “impatient” ESV). If Job were engaged in a theological debate with human beings, it would be wrong for him to become so troubled and heated. But he is not. He is engaged in a life and death struggle for justification in the presence of God. The sense of verse 4 is: “As for me, is my complaint against human beings? No, it is against God. And for that reason it is understandable that I should speak in heat and distress.”

Far from mocking him, his friends ought to grasp the seriousness of the issue, to “look at me and be appalled” (v. 5), to clap their hand over their mouth in silent “awe and astonishment.” They ought to understand that the undeserved hell they are watching is an awesome thing, an event that prefigures the undeserved hell of the cross, the event that makes undeserved grace possible.

But it is a terrible thing, and when Job thinks back to what has happened to him (“When I remember”) he is “dismayed,” so horrified that he physically shudders (v. 6). He shudders because he knows he is suffering the punishment that is due to the wicked. This horror is all the more shocking when contrasted with what often happens to wicked people in this life, which is the subject of the rest of his speech.

Wicked People Are Often Happy (vv. 7–16)

Job begins by observing the frequent happiness of evidently wicked people. This section has a headline (v. 7), a description (vv. 8–13), and finally the evidence that these people really are wicked (vv. 14–16).

A Headline (v. 7)

Why do the wicked live,

reach old age, and grow mighty in power? (v. 7)

This is “the nodal verse” of the speech. Job is not asking God “why” this happens; he is saying to his comforters, “Why, if your system is valid, do the wicked prosper?” He asks the question because it invalidates The System. He says of wicked people that they “live” (rather than die), they “reach old age” (rather than die untimely deaths), and they “grow mighty in power,” which includes both physical strength and also material wealth and prosperity. Zophar has just said that “the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless is but for a moment” (20:5). Job replies that it seems like a pretty long “moment” to him!

This question is echoed elsewhere in the Old Testament. It may be asked from a standpoint of faith or of unbelief. The Jews of Malachi’s day asked it in unbelief: “It is vain to serve God,” they said. “What is the profit of our keeping his charge …?” because “evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape” (Malachi 3:14, 15).

Others asked it in perplexity of faith, as did Jeremiah and Asaph (Jeremiah 12:1, 2; Psalm 73:3ff.). One mark of faith is not to let go of the truths we do know, even as we grapple with what seems to be their contradiction. Commenting on the fact that Jeremiah begins his complaint with the words “Righteous are you, O Lord,” One commentator writes, “It was wise of Jeremiah (and an example worth remembering) to precede what he could not grasp with what he could not deny,” namely the righteousness of God.

In a similar spirit, Job asks his question in faith. Like Jeremiah and Asaph, he was deeply perplexed by moral disorder, but his faith was not finally shaken. One commentator says that Job’s implied answer to this question is, “Because there is no moral order in the universe, no principle of retribution and no justice.” But this is not correct. Job believes that ultimately there is moral order. It is just that he observes that this order is not yet established. It is this “not yet” that distinguishes him from his friends.

To strengthen his headline, he now expands with a vivid description.

Description (vv. 8–13)

Their offspring are established in their presence,

and their descendants before their eyes.

Their houses are safe from fear,

and no rod of God is upon them.

Their bull breeds without fail;

their cow calves and does not miscarry.

They send out their little boys like a flock,

and their children dance.

They sing to the tambourine and the lyre

and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

They spend their days in prosperity,

and in peace they go down to Sheol. (vv. 8–13)

“First,” he says in effect, “I notice that they have children, and their children grow up, pass exams, get jobs, have families, and are ‘established’ [v. 8],” the very opposite of what Bildad has claimed: “He has no posterity or progeny … no survivor” (18:19) and the opposite of Job’s own sad experience of being bereft of his own children (1:19).

Next, “their houses are safe from fear,” their estates prosper, and no disciplinary or punishing “rod of God” beats them (v. 9), unlike Job himself who pleaded, “Let [God] take his rod away from me” (9:34). Later covenant blessings of farm animals multiplying all fall on the wicked (21:10; Deuteronomy 28:4; Psalm 144:13, 14). In a lovely (but ironic) picture, he sees their big families with many children jumping happily out of the SUV and racing around happily like a flock of gamboling lambs (Job 21:11). Their family life is filled with happy music, “the tambourine and the lyre” (v. 12), associated in Bible imagery with joy and celebration.

To sum it up, their lives are characterized by “prosperity” (v. 13a), and they die quickly and painlessly in their sleep (v. 13b). The words “in peace” are literally “in an instant,” the sense being that they are spared a long and painful decline due to illness or dementia.

What a wonderful life they lead! Ah, but The System says that all this prosperity proves they must be good people. “So what have you to say to that, Job?” Job goes on to prove that these people are not good.

Evidence of Their Wickedness (vv. 14–16)

They say to God, “Depart from us!

We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.

What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?

And what profit do we get if we pray to him?”

Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?

The counsel of the wicked is far from me. (vv. 14–16)

We know from their words that these are wicked people. They want nothing to do with God: “Leave us alone!” they say. “We don’t want to know your ways of living; we want to be autonomous, to make our own laws, choose our own lifestyles, they want to sing with Frank Sinatra, ‘I did it my way.’ ” Bildad has already described the wicked man as “him who knows not God” (18:21). This is the polar opposite of the godly piety of the Psalms: “Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths” (Psalm 25:4).

In verse 15 they ask Satan’s question: “Who is this supposedly ‘Almighty’ God, and what is it about him that makes him worth serving? What is in it for us? What ‘profit do we get if we pray to him’?” Right at the start of the book, Satan said that this motive (what’s in it for me?) was Job’s motive. It is the motive of wicked religion, of prosperity religion, and of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel (which is not the gospel at all).

The meaning of verse 16a is unclear. It may mean that they are claiming their prosperity to be their own doing and under their own control (“in their hand”) and that they do not need God to become rich (“Our happiness is certainly not his doing!”). The ESV takes it this way. Or it may be Job’s critical judgment that the wicked are being foolish in thinking their prosperity is under their own control, because it isn’t.

In verse 16b Job distances himself from their thinking: “The counsel of the wicked”—these wicked things they say—“is far from me.”

So, says Job, these people who are self-evidently wicked, condemned by what comes out of their own mouths, are also self-evidently prosperous. And that contradicts The System. But let’s look at the other side: his friends say the wicked will suffer the punishments of God. Do they?

Wicked People Are Rarely Punished (vv. 17–26)

How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?

That their calamity comes upon them?

That God distributes pains in his anger?

That they are like straw before the wind,

and like chaff that the storm carries away?

You say, “God stores up their iniquity for their children.”

Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.

Let their own eyes see their destruction,

and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

For what do they care for their houses after them,

when the number of their months is cut off?

Will any teach God knowledge,

seeing that he judges those who are on high?

One dies in his full vigor,

being wholly at ease and secure,

his pails full of milk

and the marrow of his bones moist.

Another dies in bitterness of soul,

never having tasted of prosperity.

They lie down alike in the dust,

and the worms cover them. (vv. 17–26)

Bildad is sure that “the light of the wicked is put out” (18:5). Zophar says there is a “day of God’s wrath” (20:28). But “How often” does this happen observably in this age (21:17)? Not very often! The comforters say that they are worthless creatures, weightless before God, blown away by the wind of God’s judgment like chaff and straw (v. 18).

Psalm 1 says much the same: “The wicked are … like chaff that the wind drives away” (Psalm 1:4). But it doesn’t look like it! We will see that Job does believe, as the Bible teaches, that ultimately the wicked are indeed like chaff and that God will send his angels to separate the righteous from the wicked like wheat from chaff (Matthew 13:24–30), but not yet. And that is the point.

Job anticipates that they will defend themselves by saying that God’s judgment hangs over the families of these people and that their families will suffer (v. 19). God “stores up” their sin in secret and is ready to “pay it out” to their families (v. 19).

Job agrees with Ezekiel 18 that it would be unjust for final judgment not to fall on those who deserve it. After all, wicked people, by definition, don’t really care for the destiny of their families (vv. 20, 21). The words “their houses after them” has the sense of their families being left behind (v. 21). “It’s no skin off my nose if trouble comes to my family after I die, as long as I’m okay!”

In verses 23–26 Job compares two deaths. In verses 23, 24 he pictures a wicked wealthy man who is healthy to the end (he dies “in his full vigor” [v. 23]), having enjoyed a restful and refreshing retirement before dying quietly in his sleep. In verse 25 we see one who “dies in bitterness of soul” (as Job himself expects to do, 3:20), never having known “prosperity” (21:25b). When they die, they are “laid out side by side in the cemetery”.

As far as we can observe, the one has had a long and happy life, the other a miserable life, and that is the end of the story. Who had the better life? Answer: the person who cared nothing for God, kept his distance from God, and lived a wicked life. Is that the whole story? It is as far as we can observe. And therefore observation and expectations in this life cannot be the whole story. The religious system that governs expectations in this life cannot be correct.

But there is one final stage in Job’s argument. He observes that even in death the wicked prosper!

Even in Death the Wicked Prosper (vv. 27–33)

Behold, I know your thoughts

and your schemes to wrong me.

For you say, “Where is the house of the prince?

Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?”

Have you not asked those who travel the roads,

and do you not accept their testimony

that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,

that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

Who declares his way to his face,

and who repays him for what he has done?

When he is carried to the grave,

watch is kept over his tomb.

The clods of the valley are sweet to him;

all mankind follows after him,

and those who go before him are innumerable. (vv. 27–33)

“I know what you are thinking,” says Job (v. 27). They say (a) wicked people come to ruin, (b) Job has come to ruin, and therefore (c) Job must be a wicked person. That is their “scheme,” and it wrongs him (v. 27).

Part of their “scheme” is that powerful, wicked people completely disappear from the earth under the judgment of God (v. 28). Their “tent” is uprooted, as Bildad has insisted (18:15–21), and their “house” is destroyed (not only their palaces, but their dynasties). There is no more trace of them on earth (v. 28).

But is it true? In verses 29, 30 Job challenges them to ask for the eyewitness “testimony” of “those who travel the roads”—that is to say, anybody who takes the trouble to walk around a bit (v. 29)! Instead of staying cocooned in your religious system, just open your eyes and walk around. If you take the trouble to do that, you will notice that the wicked do not die violent deaths (v. 30), nobody dares tell them “to their face” how evil they are, for they are too frightened of them (v. 31a), and they are not called to account for their evil deeds (v. 31b).

Oh, sure, in the end they do die (peacefully, in their sleep). But even then (vv. 32, 33) they are given grand funerals, people build fine memorials for them that are guarded so they will not be desecrated, and they rest peacefully in “the valley” (the traditional place for burials). And they are popular (v. 33b, c). Lots of people follow not only their coffin (in the funeral procession) but their examples of prosperous wickedness (“all mankind follows after him” [v. 33]). These men and women lead an evil life that they call “the good life”; but they are in a huge company, with many having gone that way before and crowds wanting to follow them afterward.

Concluding Rebuke (v. 34)

How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?

There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood. (v. 34)

At the start Job asked them to shut up because this would give him “comfort” (21:2); he comes back to this at the end. Their system is a lot of nonsense. It just doesn’t fit with the clear observations of any honest man with his eyes open. Anyone can see that wicked people often prosper and are rarely punished in this life.

It is utterly stupid, and deeply hurtful, to suppose that we can deduce from someone’s situation in this age the true state of his or her heart. A bad person may enjoy a good life, and a good person may suffer the pain of a bad life. Only the end will reveal the heart.

So the concluding question for us is…what kind of life are you living? The good life according to the world’s standards? Or the Godly life according to God’s standards contained in the scriptures.

I mentioned Sinatra’s song “I did it my way” earlier…let me read some of the lyrics to you.

“And now, the end is near And so I face the final curtain My friend, I'll say it clear I'll state my case, of which I'm certain I've lived a life that's full I traveled each and every highway And more, much more than this I did it my way Regrets, I've had a few But then again, too few to mention I did what I had to do And saw it through without exemption I planned each charted course Each careful step along the byway And more, much more than this I did it my way”

Friends you can do it your way and live the good life, but in the end, the uncertain end or final curtain as Sinatra referred to… will be certain for sure. We will all stand before the judge of the universe one day and give account of every deed done whether good or bad. And the words, “I lived a good life, but I did it my way” will not stand. God’s response will be… “To enter my kingdom must be done…my way…through Christ and through Christ alone.”

Stop doing things your way and turn to The Way, The Truth, and The Life…the Lord Jesus Christ.