Job 21:29,30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Have ye not asked them that go by the way? In these verses we have an answer to the preceding question; as if he had said, Even the travellers that pass along the road can inform you: it is so vulgar a thing that no man of common sense is ignorant of it. They can give you tokens, examples, or evidences of this truth. That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction That they are not punished as they deserve in the present world, and therefore that they shall be in the next. They shall be brought forth to the day of wrath The day of future and final wrath, when God will judge the world in righteousness, and render unto every man according to his deeds, even indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil. “I believe,” says Dr. Dodd, from Peters, “that by the day of destruction and the day of wrath, mentioned in this verse, can be meant no other than the future day of judgment; which, to the wicked and ungodly, is everywhere represented in Scripture as a day of wrath, a day of destruction and perdition. See 2 Thessalonians 1:9; 2 Peter 3:7. And it is remarkable that Job, when he declares to his friends that he had been all along withheld from sinning by a pious awe of the divine justice, (meaning, as I apprehend, the thoughts of a future judgment,) uses a like expression, Job 31:23. Destruction from God was a terror to me; איד, aid, the very same word as is used here. To understand it of a temporal destruction is to suppose Job to cut the neck of his own argument, and to fall in directly with the reasoning of his friends; for thus it would stand, (Job 21:27,) ‘Behold I know your thoughts, &c. I know what you would insinuate by the speeches which you make; such as this which follows, Job 21:28, Where is the house? &c. As if you should say, What is become of the house of Job, who lived like a prince? Or what, in general, is the portion of the wicked? Does not a great and sure destruction overtake them?' This is evidently the meaning of the question; the answer immediately follows, Job 21:29, Ask those who go by the way, &c. Now if this were meant of a temporal destruction, it directly confirms the insinuation of his friends, and the inference would be unavoidable; therefore Job must needs be wicked. The sense I contend for, must, therefore, needs be the true one.”