Job 20:18

Against wine and strong drink. We should avoid contentions. The sluggard. The righteous man. Weights and measures. Tale-bearers. The wicked son. The wise king. The glory of young men. The beauty of old men. The benefit of correction.

Image from food which is taken away from one before he can swallow it. restitution--(So Pro 6:31). The parallelism favors the English Version rather than the translation of GESENIUS, "As a possession to be restored in which he rejoices not." he shall not rejoice--His enjoyment of his ill-gotten gains shall then be at an end (Job 20:5).

That which he laboured for shall he restore,.... This explains what was before figuratively expressed by vomiting, Job 20:15; and is to be interpreted either of that which another laboured for; so the Targum paraphrases it, "another's labour;'' and Mr. Broughton renders it, "he shall restore what man's pain get": and then the sense is, that that which another got by his labour, coming by some means or another into the hand of this rapacious, covetous, wicked man, he shall be obliged to restore to him again; or the hire of the labourer being detained in his hands, he shall be forced to give it to him, as the Egyptians, by lending the Israelites their jewels of gold and silver, restored to them the wages due to them for all their labour among them for many years; or else this is to be understood of what the wicked man himself had laboured for, who with much toil and labour, as well as trick and artifice, had got the wealth of others into his hands; but should be obliged to make restoration of it again, and along with that also what he had laboured for, and had got even in an honest and lawful way, the marathon of unrighteousness corrupting and marring his whole substance: and shall not swallow it down; or "not have time to devour it", as Mr. Broughton; he shall be obliged so soon to restore it, that it shall be as if he had never had it; he shall have no enjoyment of it, at least no comfort, pleasure, and satisfaction in it: according to his substance shall the restitution be; the law of Moses required, in some cases, fourfold, in others fivefold, and sometimes sevenfold was exacted; and if a man had not sufficient to pay, all his substance was to go towards payment, and by this means what he lawfully got went along with that which was obtained in an illicit way, as befor…

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.