7 Why do the wicked have it so good, live to a ripe old age and get rich? 8 They get to see their children succeed, get to watch and enjoy their grandchildren. 9 Their homes are peaceful and free from fear; they never experience God's disciplining rod. 10 Their bulls breed with great vigor and their cows calve without fail. 11 They send their children out to play and watch them frolic like spring lambs. 12 They make music with fiddles and flutes, have good times singing and dancing. 13 They have a long life on easy street, and die painlessly in their sleep. 14 They say to God, 'Get lost! We've no interest in you or your ways. 15 Why should we have dealings with God Almighty? What's there in it for us?' 16 But they're wrong, dead wrong - they're not gods. It's beyond me how they can carry on like this!
17 "Still, how often does it happen that the wicked fail, or disaster strikes, or they get their just deserts? 18 How often are they blown away by bad luck? Not very often. 19 You might say, 'God is saving up the punishment for their children.' I say, 'Give it to them right now so they'll know what they've done!' 20 They deserve to experience the effects of their evil, feel the full force of God's wrath firsthand. 21 What do they care what happens to their families after they're safely tucked away in the grave? Fancy Funerals with All the Trimmings
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Job 21:7-21
Commentary on Job 21:7-16
(Read Job 21:7-16)
Job says, Remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always. Wherefore is it so? This is the day of God's patience; and, in some way or other, he makes use of the prosperity of the wicked to serve his own counsels, while it ripens them for ruin; but the chief reason is, because he will make it appear there is another world. These prospering sinners make light of God and religion, as if because they have so much of this world, they had no need to look after another. But religion is not a vain thing. If it be so to us, we may thank ourselves for resting on the outside of it. Job shows their folly.
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.