Job 21:26
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But together they lie down in the dust, and worms cover them both.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
This is Job's reply to Zophar's discourse, in which he complains less of his own miseries than he had done in his former discourses (finding that his friends were not moved by his complaints to pity him in the least), and comes closer to the general question that was in dispute between him and them, Whether outward prosperity, and the continuance of it, were a mark of the true church and the true members of it, so that the ruin of a man's prosperity is sufficient to prove him a hypocrite, though no other evidence appear against him: this they asserted, but Job denied. I. His preface here is designed for the moving of their affections, that he might gain their attention (Job 21:1-6). II. His discourse is designed for the convincing of their judgments and the rectifying of their mistakes. He owns that God does sometimes hang up a wicked man as it were in chains, in terrorem - as a terror to others, by some visible remarkable judgment in this life, but denies that he always does so; nay, he maintains that commonly he does otherwise, suffering even the worst of sinners to live all their days in prosperity and to go out of the world without any visible mark of his wrath upon them. 1. He describes the great prosperity of wicked people (Job 21:7-13). 2. He shows their great impiety, in which they are hardened by their prosperity (Job 21:14-16). 3. He foretels their ruin at length, but after a long reprieve (Job 21:17-21). 4. He observes a very great variety in the ways of God's providence towards men, even towards bad men (Job 21:22-26). 5. He overthrows the ground of their severe censures of him, by showing that the destruction of the wicked is reserved for the other world, and that they often escape to the last in this world (Job 21:27, to the end), and in this Job was clear…
Open source ↗21:26 eaten by the same maggots: Cp. 17:14; Isa 14:11; see Job 19:26.
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
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It is the same for all: There is a common fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as it is for the one who makes a vow, so it is for the one who refuses to take a vow.
Your pomp has been brought down to Sheol, along with the music of your harps. Maggots are your bed and worms your blanket.
The youthful vigor that fills his bones will lie down with him in the dust.
The womb forgets them; the worm feeds on them; they are remembered no more. So injustice is like a broken tree.
Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.
Like sheep they are destined for Sheol. Death will be their shepherd. The upright will rule them in the morning, and their form will decay in Sheol, far from their lofty abode.
and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’