Job 20:17

17 He shall not delight himself in streams, Like to rivers and brooks of honey and cream. 18 Giving back that for which he laboured, he shall not swallow it; He shall not rejoice according to the riches he hath gotten. 19 Because he cast down, let the destitute lie helpless; He shall not, in case he hath seized a house, finish building it. 20 Because he knew no rest in his craving, He shall not be able to rescue himself with what he most loveth. As poets sing of the aurea aetas of the paradise-like primeval age: Flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant, (Note: Ovid, Metam. i. 112, comp. Virgil, Ecl. iv. 30: Et durae quercus sudabant roscida mella; and Horace, Epod. xvi. 47 Mella cava manant ex ilice, montibus altis Levis crepante lympha desilit pede.) and as the land of promise is called in the words of Jehovah in the Thora, "a land flowing with milk and honey," the puffed-up prosperity to which the evil-doer has attained by injustice is likened to streams (פּלגּות, prop. dividings, and indeed perhaps of a country = districts, Jdg 5:15., or as here, of a fountain = streams) of rivers, of brooks (two gen. appositionis which are co-ordinate, of which Hupfeld thinks one must be crossed out; they, however, are not unpoetical, since, just as in Psa 78:9, the flow of words is suspended, Ew. 289, c) of honey and cream (comp. cream and oil, Job 29:6), if נהרי נחלי is not perhaps (which is more in accordance with the accentuation) intended as an explanatory permutative of בפלגות: he shall not feast himself upon streams, streamings of rivers of honey and cream (Dachselt); and by אל־ירא (seq. Beth, to fasten one's gaze upon anything = feast one's self upon it), the prospect of enjoying this prosperity, and indeed, since the moral judgment and feeling are concerned in the aff…

One would have thought that such an excellent confession of faith as Job made, in the close of the foregoing chapter, would satisfy his friends, or at least mollify them; but they do not seem to have taken any notice of it, and therefore Zophar here takes his turn, enters the lists with Job, and attacks him with as much vehemence as before. I. His preface is short, but hot (Job 20:2, Job 20:3). II. His discourse is long, and all upon one subject, the very same that Bildad was large upon (ch. 18), the certain misery of wicked people and the ruin that awaits them. 1. He asserts, in general, that the prosperity of a wicked person is short, and his ruin sure (Job 20:4-9). 2. He proves the misery of his condition by many instances - that he should have a diseased body, a troubled conscience, a ruined estate, a beggared family, an infamous name and that he himself should perish under the weight of divine wrath: all this is most curiously described here in lofty expressions and lively similitudes; and it often proves true in this world, and always in another, without repentance (v. 10-29). But the great mistake was, and (as bishop Patrick expresses it) all the flaw in his discourse (which was common to him with the rest), that he imagined God never varied from this method, and therefore Job was, without doubt, a very bad man, though it did not appear that he was, any other way than by his infelicity.

20:17 The streams of olive oil and rivers of milk and honey signify superabundant blessing (Exod 5:19; Deut 27:3; Joel 3:18).