Job — Chapter 20

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: This is the second round of speeches, and Zophar is the last of the three friends to speak in it. It will also be the last time he speaks at all. In the third round Eliphaz and Bildad speak again, but Zophar falls silent. He follows straight on from Job's speech in chapter 19, which held both Job's lowest cry ("Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends," 19:21) and his highest hope: "I know that my Redeemer lives" (19:25). Job ended that speech with a warning. The friends should fear the sword themselves, "that you may know there is a judgment" (19:29). Zophar heard the warning as an insult. He says nothing at all about Job's Redeemer. Instead he gives a long, vivid poem on one theme, already sounded by Eliphaz (15:20–35) and Bildad (ch 18): the wicked man may rise high and grow rich, but his joy is brief, his gains turn to poison in his stomach, and God's wrath will run him down. Zophar never says "you," but every picture is aimed at Job. A man who had been the greatest of all the people of the east (1:3), whose wealth was carried off, whose house fell, and who was struck by "the fire of God" (1:16), was meant to see himself in it.

Zophar Speaks: Wickedness Receives Just Retribution (vv1–29)

• "Therefore my thoughts answer me, because of my haste within me" (v2). Zophar admits he is stirred up. "Therefore" ties his reply to what Job has just said. Job's words have left him agitated, and he feels he cannot keep quiet. JFB reads the line as Zophar claiming his reply comes from calm thought rather than from Job's kind of excitement. Most modern readers hear the opposite: Zophar is hurried and upset, and he says so.
• "I hear censure that insults me" (v3). "Censure" is musar, the common Old Testament word for discipline or correction. The lexicon gives this verse as "the correction of my shame," that is, a rebuke that puts Zophar to shame. It is the word Eliphaz used when he told Job not to despise "the discipline of the Almighty" (5:17). Now the tables have turned. Job has rebuked the friends (19:28–29), and Zophar does not like being on the receiving end. "Out of my understanding a spirit answers me" claims his reply comes from real insight. As in Eliphaz's first speech (4:12–16), a friend claims a kind of inner certainty that Job cannot argue with.
• "Do you not know this from of old, since man was placed on earth" (v4). Zophar appeals to what everyone has always known, all the way back to the first man. Bildad made the same appeal to "bygone ages" (8:8). Tradition is not wrong in itself. But Zophar uses it to cut off the question Job keeps asking. If something has always been known, Job's case cannot be different. Guzik points out that Zophar asserts his point but never proves it.
• "The exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless but for a moment" (v5). This is Zophar's thesis, and the whole chapter unpacks it. "Godless" is chaneph, a profane, irreligious person, one who has turned from God. The lexicon lists it seven more times in Job, more than in any other book (8:13; 13:16; 15:34; 17:8). The friends keep using it, and they keep hinting that it fits Job. Much of what Zophar says is true. The Psalms say the same: the wicked "will soon fade like the grass" (Ps 37:2), and God sets them "in slippery places" (Ps 73:18). The trouble is the word "short." Zophar insists that judgment always falls quickly and visibly, in this life. Job will answer in the very next chapter that this is simply not what we see: "Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?" (21:7).
• "Though his height mount up to the heavens, and his head reach to the clouds" (v6). The proud man rises as high as he can. The picture recalls the builders of Babel, who wanted a tower "with its top in the heavens" (Gen 11:4). JFB points to the king of Babylon, who said "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds" (Isa 14:14), and to Edom, who made its nest "among the stars" (Obad 3–4). In each case the higher the climb, the harder the fall.
• "He will perish forever like his own dung" (v7). This is a crude, deliberate insult. The word gel is rare, found only here and twice in Ezekiel (4:12, 15). The lexicon says it was used there of dung dried and burned as fuel. It may have that sense here too: the wicked man is used up and gone, like a fuel cake thrown on the fire. The Tyndale notes link the image to the fate of the wicked kings of Israel, whose houses God swept away like dung (1 Kgs 14:10) and whose bodies were left on the ground like dung (2 Kgs 9:37; Jer 8:2). JFB says the word expresses "disgust and the lowest degradation." Zophar wants Job to see how complete the wicked man's ruin is. "Where is he?" is what people will ask, because nothing is left.
• "He will fly away like a dream" (v8). A dream is vivid while it lasts and gone the moment one wakes. JFB cross-references Psalm 73:20, where the wicked are "like a dream when one awakes." Verse 9 adds that his own "place" will not see him again, a line close to Job's own words in 7:8–10. Zophar may be borrowing Job's language and turning it against him.
• "His children will seek the favor of the poor, and his hands will give back his wealth" (v10). The man who grew rich by crushing the poor leaves children who must beg from the poor. Whatever he took, he is forced to give back. JFB comments in two words: "Righteous retribution!" For Job, whose children had all died (1:18–19), this line would have hurt.
• "His bones are full of his youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust" (v11). The wicked man dies in his prime. JFB hears an allusion to Job's own diseased body. The line also carries an irony Zophar may not have intended. Job had just said that after his skin was destroyed, "yet in my flesh I shall see God" (19:26). Zophar answers with a body lying down in the dust, and nothing beyond it. Adam Clarke, cited by Guzik, wondered whether Zophar was quietly dismissing the hope Job had just expressed.
• "Though evil is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue" (v12). Now Zophar turns to food, and the picture runs through v23. Sin tastes good. The wicked man rolls it around under his tongue like a sweet he doesn't want to finish, "loath to let it go" (v13). This is one of Scripture's best pictures of temptation. Proverbs says the same: "Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be full of gravel" (Prov 20:17). Matthew Henry puts it plainly: "The forbidden pleasures of sense are said to be sweet in his mouth."
• "Yet his food is turned in his stomach; it is the venom of cobras within him" (v14). The sweet thing turns to poison once it is swallowed. "Venom" is merorah, from a root meaning bitter. The lexicon defines it as gall or poison. People in the ancient world thought a snake's venom was its gall, its bitter bile. JFB notes the old belief and adds that the venom is really kept in a sac near the mouth. The same Hebrew word comes back in v25, where it means the "gallbladder" that the arrow pierces. The poison the wicked man swallowed in v14 is the very place he is struck in v25. The Tyndale notes draw the lesson that evil people end up harming themselves most of all. Paul quotes the Psalms on sinners with "the venom of asps" under their lips (Rom 3:13).
• "He swallows down riches and vomits them up again; God casts them out of his belly" (v15). The meal is wealth taken by force, and God makes him throw it up. Matthew Henry is vivid here: "He has swallowed down riches as eagerly as ever a hungry man swallowed down meat," but "what he has unjustly swallowed he shall be compelled to disgorge." Verse 16 repeats the snake picture: he sucks cobra poison, and "the tongue of a viper will kill him." Henry turns it into a proverb: "The fawning tongue will prove the viper's tongue."
• "He will not look upon the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds" (v17). Honey and curds (thickened milk, like yogurt or cream) were the richest foods of the land. "Flowing with milk and honey" was the promised land's description (Exod 3:8), and the Tyndale notes link the line to that picture of great blessing (Deut 27:3; Joel 3:18). The wicked man will never enjoy the good life he worked so hard to grab.
• "He will give back the fruit of his toil and will not swallow it down" (v18). He works and trades and makes his profit, but "he will get no enjoyment" from it. The food is taken from his mouth before he can swallow it.
• "For he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build" (v19). Here is the crime behind the punishment: oppression. He grew rich by crushing the poor and leaving them helpless, and by taking other people's homes. Matthew Henry says: "To enrich himself, he has robbed the spital, and made the poor poorer." (A "spital" was an old word for a hospital or almshouse for the poor.) JFB adds that this man "ought to have espoused their cause." This is the charge the friends most want to lay at Job's door, and in the third round Eliphaz will finally say it outright: "you have sent widows away empty" (22:9). Job will answer with a long account of how he cared for the poor, the widow and the orphan (29:12–17; 31:16–22).
• "Because he knew no contentment in his belly" (v20). The root sin is greed. The wicked man is never satisfied, and he lets nothing he wants escape him. The Tyndale notes compare him to the grave itself, which in Scripture is never full (Prov 27:20; 30:15–16; Hab 2:5). "There was nothing left after he had eaten" (v21). He devoured everything, so nothing remains to sustain him when the hard day comes.
• "In the fullness of his sufficiency he will be in distress" (v22). At the very height of his plenty, trouble arrives. "The hand of everyone in misery will come against him," the very people he crushed. Guzik suggests Zophar believed Job's trouble came from exactly this kind of self-sufficiency.
• "To fill his belly to the full, God will send his burning anger against him and rain it upon him" (v23). This is the grim climax of the food picture. The glutton wanted a full belly, and God gives him one: a bellyful of wrath. "Rain" in a dry land is usually a gift. Here it is the reverse. JFB reads it as a "fiery rain," lightning, like the fire and sulfur that rained on Sodom (Gen 19:24; compare Ps 11:6).
• "He will flee from an iron weapon; a bronze arrow will strike him through" (v24). He escapes one danger only to fall to another. The Tyndale notes compare Amos 5:19, where a man flees from a lion and meets a bear. (The KJV reads "steel" here. JFB corrects it to "brass," that is, bronze.) Guzik notes a sharp edge in the picture. Job had complained that "the arrows of the Almighty are in me" (6:4) and that God's archers had slashed open his kidneys and poured out his gall (16:13). Zophar takes Job's own image of God's arrows and says, in effect, that is what happens to the wicked.
• "The glittering point comes out of his gallbladder; terrors come upon him" (v25). The arrow goes right through him, and its tip comes out gleaming with his gall. This is the same word merorah as the "venom" of v14. The Tyndale notes explain that a wound to such an organ was understood to be fatal, so "terrors" here are the terrors of death, even though the words "of death" are not in the text. The word for "terrors" (emah) is often the dread God himself sends (Exod 15:16; 23:27). JFB hears an echo of Bildad, who said that "terrors frighten him on every side" (18:11).
• "Utter darkness is laid up for his treasures; a fire not fanned will devour him" (v26). His treasures are stored away, but what is really stored up for him is darkness. "A fire not fanned" is a fire no human hand lit or blew on. JFB reads it as fire kindled by God, not by man. The Tyndale notes add that darkness and fire in Scripture often signal God's presence in judgment, as at Sinai (Deut 4:11; Heb 12:18) and in the plagues of Egypt (Exod 9:23–24; 10:21–23). For Job, who had lost his flocks to "the fire of God" (1:16), the meaning was clear. "What is left in his tent will be consumed": nothing of his household survives.
• "The heavens will reveal his iniquity, and the earth will rise up against him" (v27). This may be the most pointed line in the speech. In chapter 16 Job cried, "O earth, cover not my blood," and then, "my witness is in heaven" (16:18–19). He was calling on earth and heaven as witnesses for him. Zophar turns both against him. Heaven will expose his guilt, and earth will testify against him. Moses had called heaven and earth to witness against Israel (Deut 30:19; 31:28), and the Tyndale notes point to those passages. Zophar is sure the whole creation is on his side of the argument.
• "The possessions of his house will be carried away, dragged off in the day of God's wrath" (v28). His goods are carried off. JFB pictures his wealth as something that will "flow away" like water. Again, Job had seen his oxen, donkeys and camels carried off by raiders (1:14–17).
• "This is the wicked man's portion from God, the heritage decreed for him by God" (v29). Zophar signs off with a summary line. "Portion" (cheleq) is a share or allotment, the piece of land a family received. "Heritage" (nachalah) is an inheritance. The lexicon notes that these two words are paired three times in Job: here, in 27:13 and in 31:2. In 27:13 Job himself will repeat Zophar's line almost word for word, in his own description of the wicked man's end. Job does not deny that God judges the wicked. He denies that his own suffering proves he is one of them. The words also have a happier use elsewhere. The LORD told Aaron, "I am your portion and your inheritance" (Num 18:20), and the psalmist says, "The LORD is my chosen portion" (Ps 16:5; compare Lam 3:24). The wicked man's portion is wrath. The believer's portion is God himself.
• What Zophar gets right and wrong. Faithful readers broadly agree on how to weigh this speech. Almost everything Zophar says about sin is true somewhere in Scripture: sin is sweet at first and bitter at the end, greed is never satisfied, oppression of the poor provokes God, and the wicked will finally be judged. His error is in three places. First, timing: he insists judgment always comes quickly and visibly in this life, which Job 21 and Psalm 73 both deny. Second, direction: he reasons backward from Job's suffering to Job's sin. Third, silence: he has nothing at all to say about mercy, repentance or Job's hope in a Redeemer. God's own verdict at the end of the book is that the friends "have not spoken of me what is right" (42:7). Zophar's speech shows how true statements, applied wrongly, can become false witness.
• Commentators: Matthew Henry sums up Zophar's thesis as "the prosperity of a wicked person is short, and his ruin sure," and admires how it is "most curiously described here in lofty expressions and lively similitudes." But he faults the friends for assuming God always deals with people this way, and so concluding that Job must be wicked. Guzik agrees with this balance. He judges Zophar mostly correct that there is a moral order and that wickedness does not pay in the end, but wrong to apply it to Job. Guzik passes on several older voices: Oswald Chambers, who says Zophar heard Job's words but not the spirit behind them; Francis Andersen, who notes that Zophar dwells only on material loss and leaves no room for repentance or restored favor, and so shows no compassion; and G. Campbell Morgan, who sums up the speech as passionate but narrow. JFB gives careful notes on the images (the asp's gall, the fire "not blown" by man, the "fiery rain") and reads v11 as aimed at Job's disease. JFB gives no comment on vv1, 4 and 13, and only cross-references on vv6 and 8. The lexicon confirms that the "venom" of v14 and the "gallbladder" of v25 are the same Hebrew word, merorah.

Pointing to Christ

Zophar describes "the wicked man's portion from God": a sweet sin that turns to poison, a bellyful of burning wrath, an arrow through the gall, utter darkness, fire from heaven, everything stripped away. He meant it for Job, and he was wrong about Job. But the portion he describes is real, and the gospel says Someone did receive it who did not deserve it either. Jesus was "numbered with the transgressors" (Isa 53:12). At the cross he was offered wine mixed with gall (Matt 27:34), darkness covered the land at midday (Matt 27:45), his clothes were divided by lot (John 19:24), and he drank the cup of God's wrath that he had prayed might pass from him (Matt 26:39). God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). Because he took the wicked man's portion, those who trust him receive a different one: an inheritance "imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven" (1 Pet 1:4), and the LORD himself as their portion (Ps 16:5). Zophar had no word of mercy for a suffering man. In Christ, God has the last word, and it is mercy.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik notes that Zophar's speech is essentially a longer version of his first speech (ch. 11) with added visceral imagery. He has not grown or reconsidered — he has simply become more graphic. The vomiting imagery reveals Zophar's view of Job's loss: God is forcing Job to give back what he should never have had. This directly contradicts 1:1-3 where Job's wealth is presented as divine blessing on genuine righteousness. Guzik also observes that Zophar's departure after this speech (no third speech) may indicate he has nothing left to say — his theology cannot develop beyond "the wicked are punished."
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• BibleProject: bibleproject.com On the whole book: the speech from the whirlwind, and why it answers Job the way it does.
• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of Job -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Judgment Isn't Always Immediate (v.5) — Zophar insists the wicked man's triumph is always brief, a theology that requires visible, instant judgment every time. Have you noticed how some wrongdoing seems to go unpunished for a long time, and does that shake or refine your understanding of God's justice?
• Vivid Language That Reveals the Heart (vv.12-15) — Zophar's graphic imagery of wealth turning to poison and being vomited back up betrays how emotionally invested he is in seeing Job specifically brought low. Do you ever find satisfaction in someone's downfall because it seems to confirm what you already believed about them?
• An Accusation Dressed as General Truth (v.19) — Zophar's claim that "the wicked man oppresses the poor" is aimed squarely at Job without any actual evidence that Job ever did this. Do you apply a true principle to a specific person's situation without first checking whether it actually fits them?
• Certainty That Outruns the Evidence (v.29) — Zophar declares with total confidence that this fate is Job's assigned portion from God, though he has no revelation or proof beyond his own theological system. Are your strongest certainties about other people grounded in what you actually know, or in what your assumptions need to be true?