7 "Why do the wicked prosper, growing old and powerful? 8 They live to see their children grow up and settle down, and they enjoy their grandchildren. 9 Their homes are safe from every fear, and God does not punish them. 10 Their bulls never fail to breed. Their cows bear calves and never miscarry. 11 They let their children frisk about like lambs. Their little ones skip and dance. 12 They sing with tambourine and harp. They celebrate to the sound of the flute. 13 They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to the grave in peace. 14 And yet they say to God, 'Go away. We want no part of you and your ways. 15 Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him? What good will it do us to pray?' 16 (They think their prosperity is of their own doing, but I will have nothing to do with that kind of thinking.)
17 "Yet the light of the wicked never seems to be extinguished. Do they ever have trouble? Does God distribute sorrows to them in anger? 18 Are they driven before the wind like straw? Are they carried away by the storm like chaff? Not at all! 19 "'Well,' you say, 'at least God will punish their children!' But I say he should punish the ones who sin, so that they understand his judgment. 20 Let them see their destruction with their own eyes. Let them drink deeply of the anger of the Almighty. 21 For they will not care what happens to their family after they are dead.
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.