Job 20:21

21 Nothing escaped his covetousness, Therefore his prosperity shall not continue. 22 In the fulness of his need it shall be strait with him, Every hand of the needy shall come upon him. 23 It shall come to pass: in order to fill his belly, He sendeth forth the glow of His anger into him, And He causeth it to rain upon him into his flesh. 24 He must flee from an iron weapon, Therefore a brazen bow pierceth him through. 25 It teareth, then it cometh forth out of his body, And the steel out of his gall, The terrors of death come upon him. The words of Job 20:21 are: there was nothing that escaped (שׂריד, as Job 18:19, from שׂרד, Arab. šarada, aufugere) his eating (from אכל, not from אכל), i.e., he devoured everything without sparing, even to the last remnant; therefore טוּבו, his prosperity, his abundant wealth, will not continue or hold out (יחיל, as Psa 10:5, to be solid, powerful, enduring, whence חיל, Arab. ȟı̂lat, ḥawl). Hupf. transl. differently: nihil ei superstes ad vescendum, itaque non durant ejus bona; but שׂריד signifies first elapsum, and על־כן propterea; and we may retain these first significations, especially since Job 20:21 is not future like Job 20:21. The tone of prediction taken up in Job 20:21 is continued in what follows. The inf. constr. מלאות (prop. מלאות, but with Cholem by the Aleph, since the Waw is regarded as יתיר, superfluous), formed after the manner of the verbs Lamed He (Ew. 238, c), is written like קראות, Jdg 8:1 (comp. on the other hand the scriptio devectiva, Lev 8:33; Lev 12:4); and שׂפקו (with Sin, as Norzi decides after Codd., Kimchi, and Farisol, not Samech) is to be derived from שׂפק (ספק), sufficientia (comp. the verb, Kg1 20:10): if his sufficiency exists in abundance, not from שׂפק = Arab. safqat, ṣafqat, complosio, according…

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.