17 “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out,
that their calamity comes on them,
that God distributes sorrows in his anger? 18 How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind,
as chaff that the storm carries away? 19 You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’
Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it. 20 Let his own eyes see his destruction.
Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 21 For what does he care for his house after him,
when the number of his months is cut off?
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Job 21:17-21
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.