Job 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Zophar the Naamathite speaks a second time, answering Job's last reply. He says he is stung by what Job said, and then lays out a long description of the wicked man: his success is brief, the wealth he swallowed is vomited back up, and violence and darkness overtake him. He closes by saying this ruin is the portion God assigns to a wicked man.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • Zophar the Naamathite answered.
   • Zophar spoke.
2. 20:2
   • Zophar says his disquieting thoughts compel him to reply.
   • Zophar says he answers because of the agitation within him.
3. 20:3
   • Zophar says he has heard a rebuke that insults him.
   • Zophar says a spirit out of his understanding gives him his answer.
4. 20:4
   • Zophar asks Job whether he knows this from of old.
   • Zophar dates this knowledge from the time man was placed upon the earth.
5. 20:5
   • The exulting of the wicked is short.
   • The joy of the godless lasts only a moment.
6. 20:6
   • The wicked man's loftiness may mount up to the heavens.
   • His head may reach to the cloud.
7. 20:7
   • He will perish forever like his own dung.
   • Those who saw him will ask where he is.
8. 20:8
   • He will fly away like a dream and will not be found.
   • He will be chased away like a vision of the night.
9. 20:9
   • The eye that saw him will not see him again.
   • His place will no longer behold him.
10. 20:10
    • His sons will seek the favor of the poor.
    • His own hands will give back his wealth.
11. 20:11
    • His bones are full of the sin of his youth, the Hebrew word meaning his youthful vigor.
    • What fills his bones will lie down with him in the dust.
12. 20:12
    • Evil is sweet in his mouth.
    • He hides it under his tongue.
13. 20:13
    • He spares it and will not let it go.
    • He keeps it back inside his mouth.
14. 20:14
    • His food is turned in his bowels.
    • It becomes the venom of cobras within him.
15. 20:15
    • He has swallowed wealth.
    • He will vomit it up again.
    • God will drive it out of his belly.
16. 20:16
    • He will suck the poison of cobras.
    • The tongue of a viper will kill him.
17. 20:17
    • He will not look upon the streams.
    • He will not look upon the rivers and brooks of honey and curd.
18. 20:18
    • He must give back what he labored for and not swallow it.
    • The restitution matches the wealth he traded for.
    • He will not rejoice in it.
19. 20:19
    • He crushed and abandoned the poor.
    • He seized a house he did not build.
20. 20:20
    • He knew no quiet within his belly.
    • He will not escape with the thing he desired.
21. 20:21
    • Nothing was left over from his eating.
    • Therefore his prosperity will not endure, or, as the King James reads it, no one will look for his goods; the wording admits both.
22. 20:22
    • In the fullness of his sufficiency he will be in distress.
    • Every hand of the troubled will come upon him.
23. 20:23
    • When he is filling his belly, God will send the fury of his anger upon him.
    • God will rain it upon him while he eats.
24. 20:24
    • He will flee from the iron weapon.
    • A bronze bow will pierce him through.
25. 20:25
    • The weapon is drawn out and comes out of his back.
    • The gleaming point comes out of his gall.
    • Terrors come upon him.
26. 20:26
    • Total darkness is stored up for his treasures.
    • A fire that no one blew will consume him.
    • It will go ill with what is left in his tent.
27. 20:27
    • The heavens will reveal his iniquity.
    • The earth will rise up against him.
28. 20:28
    • The increase of his house will depart.
    • His goods will be swept away in the day of God's anger.
29. 20:29
    • This is the portion of a wicked man from God.
    • This is the heritage God has appointed him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

Zophar is the third of Job's three friends, and Naamah is his home town, otherwise unknown. This is his second and last speech in the book; he is replying to what Job has just said in chapter 19. The friends speak in turn, each answering Job's previous reply, so the chapters read as one long argument in rounds.

20:2

The King James begins "Therefore," which reads oddly in modern English because nothing has been concluded yet. The Hebrew means something closer to "this is exactly why I have to speak": Zophar is saying his agitation leaves him no choice.

20:3

The King James "check of my reproach" uses "check" in its older sense of a rebuke or correction. Zophar means he has been told off, and takes it as an insult.

20:5

The King James "hypocrite" is misleading here. The Hebrew word means godless or morally polluted, someone with no regard for God, not someone who puts on a false show of goodness.

20:6

The King James "excellency" does not mean excellence in the modern sense. It means height or loftiness, and here refers to a man raising himself up, the physical image of towering into the sky is the picture of arrogance.

20:7

Dung was the most worthless thing in a household, swept out and burned as fuel. To perish "like his own dung" is to be disposed of and forgotten, not merely to die.

20:9

"His place" means the land, house or estate he owned. The Hebrew speaks of it as though it had eyes: the property itself will not see its owner again.

20:10

The picture is a reversal, the children of a man who robbed the poor are reduced to begging favors from poor people themselves. The Hebrew leaves it open whose hands give back the wealth, his or his children's.

20:11

The Hebrew says only "his bones are full of his youth," which can mean either youthful vigor or the wrongs done in youth. The King James adds the word "sin" to settle the question; the original does not.

20:12

The image is of a sweet held in the mouth rather than swallowed, tucked under the tongue to make the taste last. Zophar is describing someone savoring wrongdoing the way you would savor a delicacy.

20:14

"Meat" in the King James means food of any kind, not flesh, and "bowels" means the insides or stomach generally. "Gall" is bile, the bitter fluid of the gall bladder; ancient writers used it as a word for snake venom.

20:15

This is a word picture. The man did not really eat money. It means he will lose everything he took.

20:16

Ancient writers often spoke of a snake's tongue as the thing that struck and killed, where we would say fangs. The word translated "asp" is a large venomous snake, usually taken to be a cobra.

20:17

"Butter" in the King James means curdled milk or thick cream, not the churned butter we buy. Rivers running with honey and cream was a stock image of a land of extreme plenty, the same picture behind the phrase "a land flowing with milk and honey."

20:18

Restitution was a legal obligation in the ancient world: someone who took what was not his had to repay it, sometimes with an added penalty. The point is that the man is legally stripped of his gains rather than simply losing them.

20:19

Seizing houses and fields from debtors was the standard example of oppression by the powerful in the ancient Near East. A creditor could take the property of someone who could not pay, and the poor had little redress.

20:20

In Hebrew the belly or stomach often stands for a person's appetite and inner self, not just the organ. "He shall not feel quietness in his belly" means his craving never settled.

20:21

"Meat" again means food in general. The image is of a man who devoured everything, leaving nothing over, including nothing to sustain him later.

20:22

"In straits" means hemmed in, squeezed, with no room to move. The second half is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean the full force of misery falls on him, or that the hand of everyone he made miserable comes against him.

20:24

The King James "bow of steel" is inaccurate; steel was not made in this period. The Hebrew word means bronze, and refers to a bronze-tipped arrow or a bronze-fitted bow.

20:25

"Gall" here stands for the gall bladder and the liver beside it, the vital organs deep in the body. An arrow coming out through them describes a wound clean through the man.

20:26

"A fire not blown" means a fire nobody lit and nobody fanned with bellows, that is, one with no human cause. "Tabernacle" in the King James simply means tent, the ordinary dwelling of a herdsman like Job, not a place of worship.

20:27

Calling on the heavens and the earth to testify was courtroom and treaty language in the ancient Near East: they stood as permanent witnesses who had seen everything and could be summoned to give evidence.

20:28

"The increase of his house" means everything the household has produced and accumulated: crops, herds, goods. "Flow away" continues a flood image, wealth swept off like topsoil in a torrent.

20:29

"Portion" and "heritage" are inheritance words. A portion was the share of land or goods allotted to a person, and a heritage was what passed to him by right. Zophar is saying this ruin is the man's assigned share, handed to him as another man receives an estate.