Job 21:1-6

F.

INTEGRITY, PROSPERITY, AND THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY RIGHTEOUS GOD (Job 21:1-34)

1.

Job pleads for a sympathetic hearing. (Job 21:1-6)

TEXT 21:1-6

21 Then Job answered and said,

2 Hear diligently my speech;

And let this be your consolations.

3 Suffer me, and I also will speak;

And after that I have spoken, mock on.

4 As for me, is my complaint to man?

And why should I not be impatient?

5 Mark me, and be astonished,

And lay your hand upon your mouth.

6 Even when I remember I am troubled,

And horror taketh hold on my flesh.

COMMENT 21:1-6

Job 21:1For the sixth time Job responds to Zophar out of the depths of his realistic experience. Here we vividly see the radical distinction between his experience and the a priori theories of his three friends. Job confronts their thesis that the righteous are happy and the wicked are miserable with a counter claimthat the wicked are often prosperous. This Jobian speech falls into five sections: (1) Job appeals for a hearingJob 21:2-6; (2) The wicked prosperJob 21:7-16; (3) He asks, Do the wicked suffer?Job 21:17-22; (4) Death levels everyone and everythingJob 21:23-26; and (5) Universal experience contradicts the arguments of his three comfortersJob 21:27-34. It is the only fully polemical speech from Job.

Job 21:2Eliphaz had identified his words with the consolation of GodJob 15:11. Now Job asks them to consider real consolation. He has emerged victorious over the temptation presented to him by both his friends and his wife. He has asserted his faith that God knows his innocence and will ultimately testify to it. He still believes in God's goodness and has a basis from which to reject the accusing recommendations of his friends. He passes from mere defensiveness to frontal attack. Theologically, his friends have attacked him from behind the bulwark of the eternal universal principle of retributive justice. Job brilliantly and relentlessly undertakes to falsify the principle from which they continually deduced so many erroneous conclusions. First, it is not universally self-evident that God sends retributive justice in this life (note similar argument in Kant's Critique of Practical Judgment). Secondly, God does not destroy the godless in a momentJob 21:5-6; and thirdly, that the impious do not always prosper, but they often doJeremiah 12:1 ff; Ecclesiastes 7:15. Job asks only for their discreet silence and attentive ears.

Job 21:3The verbs preceding this verse are all plural, but here this one is in the singular. Job is focusing attention on Zophar's just-ended discourse on the fate of the wicked. After what I have to say, you will no longer mock me.

Job 21:4Job's complaint is against God, not man. He would expect at least sympathy from man. He receives no consolation from either God or man. He is protesting the moral anomalies that God allows in His world. Job has inquired of God, but God remains silent; therefore, Job is impatient (lit. my spirit is short).

Job 21:5-6Laying one's hand over the mouth is the gesture of awe and voluntary silence.[233] Job's friends will be silent when they hear and understand his argument concerning the prosperity of the wicked. He shudders at the very thought of an amoral universe.

[233] See J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: University Press), p. 333, for picture of Mesopotamian seal cylinder from the third millennium B.C. depicting Etana flying heavenward on eagle's wings while one onlooker has his mouth covered.