There seems to be some controversy over Job’s speech in Job 27:11-23. Many scholars believe it contradicts Job 24:2-24, and, therefore, conclude that he is retracting what he claimed there, believing Job’s words must have been tentative and controversial. The problem is, if he does that, he would be agreeing to what the friends had been saying all along (viz. Job 27:11-23), namely that the wicked are punished in this life! If this is true, then Job has cast aside much more than his claims in chapter 24. Nevertheless, the viewpoint of some fewer scholars that Zophar had taken an opportunity to respond, making the claims of 11-23 seems untenable, because this would mean the verse introducing Zophar would have been lost, as well as that reintroducing Job in 28:1. Moreover, the idea of others that Job anticipates the friends’ response in these verses is equally unsupportable, because it would be ridiculous to state the friends’ argument without replying to it, showing how they would be wrong. So, if none of these arguments satisfy, what is Job’s argument in Job 27:11-23?
In Job 27:11 Job tells the friends that he would now teach them about the hand of God. They believed Job had suffered the wrath of God by his hand, and, therefore, believed he was wicked. Nevertheless, they were wrong, so Job says he is about to explain clearly how God treats the wicked. Of course, this wasn’t some great secret, known only to Job, so they should have been able to see the thing, just as Job was able to see it. So, how did they miss it, and why do they embrace such weak arguments about how the Lord deals with mankind (Job 27:12)? This is what surprised Job, just as a refusal to see the truth that contradicts one’s false traditions astonishes all who love the truth.
Job began by saying that the wicked’s portion, or their reward at the hand of God, would be the heritage of an oppressor (Job 27:13). The oppressor often seems to be indestructible, but in the hand of God, as Job intends to show, he can and will be utterly destroyed. To the ancients a large family insured that their name, indeed one’s life, continued in them. However, as that pertained to the wicked, their children, if they had large families (Job 27:14; cp. Psalm 17:14), they would die by the sword (cp. 2Kings 10:7; Hosea 9:13), for want (famine) or by death (pestilence; cp. Revelation 6:8), and they wouldn’t be mourned with large funerals, which was evidence of a great man (Job 27:15). Rather, they would be buried in haste, as was the custom during seasons of pestilence.
Although the wicked enjoy great wealth in this life and prepare for themselves such wonderful adornment (verse-16), yet real wealth and adornment is ultimately enjoyed only by the righteous and the innocent (Job 27:17). When one dies, he can take none of this world’s wealth with him. Thus, the wicked, who are so interested in the pleasures of this life, have prepared for themselves the house of a moth (verse-18). A moth has no house, and so the wicked have no house in the Kingdom of God. Only the righteous and the innocent are able to carry over their labors into the life after their deaths, because obeying the Lord, today, carries great weight and great reward for the life one has with him after death.
The rich man or the wicked man, who had accumulated such great wealth in the land of the living, will lie down, vis-à-vis he will die (cp. Job 14:10), but he’ll be unable to gather himself, for, when he opens his eyes, he no longer exists in a world, where he was a mover and a shaker (Job 27:19-20). Rather, terrors will take hold of him, and, as a great storm is able to carry away so much with its power, so the wicked man will be hurled out of his place, vis-à-vis his spirit will be violently removed from its physical body (Job 27:21).
It is the Lord who casts him out, and, although the wicked would desire to flee away (Job 27:22), he is caught and forcefully removed out of his place by the power of God (Job 27:23). Thus, if this is truly the fate of the wicked, and Job believes it to be so, why would he continue to deny his wickedness, if the friends spoke the truth? Why wouldn’t he repent at their advice? Repenting, and drawing near to the Lord would surely be met with forgiveness by the Almighty, and Job would, thus, avoid the reward of the wicked. Therefore, although Job’s present calamity seems to resemble the fate of the wicked, the fact that he still held out hope that God would ultimately vindicate him (Job 19:21-27) should have been proof enough that Job wasn’t the wicked man, the friends had supposed him to be!
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