Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Job · About this commentary
Job: Why Do the Wicked Live?
Job 21:1-16
1 Then Job answered, · WEB
Job answers the whole system with one observation anybody can check: the wicked frequently do well, and know exactly why they see no reason to pray.
Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation Job 21:2. The one thing they can still do for him is hear him out, and he asks for it as the substitute for the comfort they have failed to give.
He also tells them where his complaint is aimed: is my complaint to man? Job 21:4. They have been answering as though they were the defendants. They are not the party he wants.
Then the question, and it undoes three speeches at once. Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power? Job 21:7.
Everything the friends have built requires that this not happen. Zophar had just said the triumph of the wicked is short. Job says look around.
What follows is a portrait to set against Bildad's and Zophar's, and its cruelty is that it is a picture of Job's own former life, now belonging to men who despise God. Their child is established with them in their sight Job 21:8 — the thing Job lost first. Their houses are safe from fear Job 21:9 — a house that stands. The livestock breed without failing Job 21:10.
And then children again, twice more: they send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance, with tambourine, harp and pipe Job 21:11–12. Job is describing other people's sons and daughters dancing at exactly the point in the poem where his own died at a feast.
The death of such a man is given in half a line: they spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol Job 21:13. No long decline, no reckoning — a good life and a quick end.
The most striking part is that Job quotes them, and what they say is a coherent position. Depart from us, for we don't want to know about your ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him? Job 21:14–15.
That is the accuser's question from chapter 1 turned inside out. He asked whether Job served God for nothing Job 1:9, assuming that piety is a transaction. These men have run the calculation and concluded there is no return, so they have stopped. They are the proof that the transactional view leads straight out of religion, and Job is the proof that it was never the reason he was in it.
He adds a line to keep the record straight: the counsel of the wicked is far from me Job 21:16. He is reporting their prosperity, not envying it. What he refuses to do is pretend it is not there.
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