17 "How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them? That God[1] distributes pains in his anger? 18 That they are like straw before the wind, and like chaff that the storm carries away? 19 You say, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children.' Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it. 20 Let their own eyes see their destruction, and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 21 For what do they care for their houses after them, when the number of their months is cut off? 22 Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those who are on high? 23 One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, 24 his pails[2] full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. 25 Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. 26 They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Job 21:17-26
Commentary on Job 21:17-26
(Read Job 21:17-26)
Job had described the prosperity of wicked people; in these verses he opposes this to what his friends had maintained about their certain ruin in this life. He reconciles this to the holiness and justice of God. Even while they prosper thus, they are light and worthless, of no account with God, or with wise men. In the height of their pomp and power, there is but a step between them and ruin. Job refers the difference Providence makes between one wicked man and another, into the wisdom of God. He is Judge of all the earth, and he will do right. So vast is the disproportion between time and eternity, that if hell be the lot of every sinner at last, it makes little difference if one goes singing thither, and another sighing. If one wicked man die in a palace, and another in a dungeon, the worm that dies not, and the fire that is not quenched, will be the same to them. Thus differences in this world are not worth perplexing ourselves about.