Zophar’s second and final speech restates the whole friends’ argument at its most confident: the wicked always fall, and fall fast. Job’s answer does not deny that this sometimes happens — it simply points out, with plain observation anyone could check for themselves, that it very often does not.
A study in Job 20-21 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 12 min read
The Triumphing Of The Wicked Is Short
“Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens… yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?”
Job 20:4-7
Zophar, who spoke first and shortest of the three friends, gets his final word here, and it is delivered as settled wisdom rather than argument — “knowest thou not this of old,” as if the matter were beyond dispute. This is his whole case in two verses: wickedness might rise as high as the sky, but its fall is certain and swift.
Though Wickedness Be Sweet In His Mouth
“Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue… yet his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of asps within him. He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.”
Job 20:12-15
Zophar’s image turns almost visceral — sin enjoyed like a delicacy, then reversing violently in the body that consumed it. Ill-gotten wealth, in his picture, cannot stay down; it is forced back out exactly as it went in, with none of the pleasure retained.
God Shall Cast The Fury Of His Wrath Upon Him
“When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.”
Job 20:23-24
Zophar closes with judgment arriving in the middle of an ordinary meal, unannounced and total. “This is the portion of a wicked man from God” (20:29) is his final sentence — a tidy formula, offered with total confidence, that the coming chapters will not let stand unchallenged.
Wherefore Do The Wicked Live, Become Old?
“Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.”
Job 21:7-9
Job does not answer Zophar’s theology with counter-theology. He answers with observation, the same kind of appeal to common experience Zophar himself relied on — except Job’s version of “knowest thou not this of old” produces the opposite conclusion. Plenty of wicked people, he points out, live long, prosper, and raise families in perfect safety.
They Spend Their Days In Wealth
“They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?”
Job 21:13-15
Job’s point sharpens further: not only do the wicked often prosper, some of them prosper while explicitly rejecting God to His face, and suffer no visible consequence for it. If Zophar’s formula were reliably true, this is exactly the group it should catch first. It very often does not.
They Shall Lie Down Alike In The Dust
“One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet… And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.”
Job 21:23, 25-26
Job’s observation here is genuinely difficult for any simple retribution formula to absorb: two men, one content and one bitter, arrive at the identical grave. Whatever distinguishes righteous from wicked in this life, Job argues, it is not reliably visible in how comfortably either one dies.
In Your Answers There Remaineth Falsehood
“Behold, I know your thoughts, and the devices which ye wrongfully imagine against me… How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood?”
Job 21:27, 34
Job closes the second round of speeches with a direct verdict on everything said so far — not merely unhelpful, but false, and false specifically because it was built on a rule about the world that does not actually hold up under plain observation. Two full cycles of argument have produced no agreement and no resolution. Round three is about to begin, considerably shorter and considerably more strained.
