Job 21:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

How oft is the candle of the wicked put out! Or, lamp, that is, their glory or outward happiness. I grant that this happens often, though not constantly, as you affirm. This certainly best agrees, both with the use of this phraseology in Scripture, in which it always signifies that a thing is done frequently, and never that it is done but seldom; and with the foregoing words, which contain a reason why the counsel of the wicked was far from him, namely, because they often pay dear for their wickedness in this life, and always in the life to come. This sense of the words also agrees best with the following verses, in which he discourses largely, not of the prosperity of the wicked, (as he should have done, if he had intended to say that such were but seldom afflicted,) but of their calamities.