Job 21:7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Wherefore do the wicked live? That is, long and happily: become old? Namely, in their prosperous state: yea, are mighty in power? Are preferred to places of authority and trust, and not only make a great figure, but bear a great sway? Now, if things be as you say, how comes this to pass? Wherefore does the righteous God distribute things so unequally? “The description, which follows, of a prosperous estate is such as might, indeed, justly create envy, were a wicked man, in any state, to be envied; for we have here the chief ingredients of human happiness, as it respects this life, brought together and described in terms exactly suiting the simplicity of manners, and the way of living in Job's time and country, as, first, security and safety to themselves and families; Job 21:9. Their houses are safe from fear Of the incursions of robbers, we may suppose, or the depredations of the neighbouring clans, so usual in those ancient times, and of which Job had felt the mischievous effects. Next health, or a freedom from diseases, called in the language of that age, the rod of God. See 1 Samuel 26:10. To this is added plenty of cattle, the riches of those times; Job 21:10. Next comes a numerous and hopeful offspring; and what a rural picture has he drawn of them! Job 21:11. They send forth their little ones like a flock Of sheep or goats, as the word signifies, in great numbers, and with sweet concord, which is a singular delight to them and their parents. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe; Job 21:12. Lastly, and to crown all, after a prosperous and pleasant life comes an easy death. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave That is, their days pass on in a continual flow of prosperity, till they drop into the grave without a groan. As every thing in this divine poem is wonderful, there is scarce any thing more to be admired in it than the variety of descriptions which are given us of human life, in its most exalted prosperity, on the one hand, and its deepest distress on the other: for this is what their subject led them to enlarge upon on both sides; with this only difference, that the three friends were for limiting prosperity to the good, whereas Job insists upon a mixed distribution of things from the hand of Providence; but as all of them, in every speech almost, enlarge upon one or other of these topics, the variety of imagery and colouring in which they paint to us these different estates, all drawn from nature, and suiting the simplicity of those ancient times, is inexpressibly amusing and entertaining: then their being considered as the dispensations of Providence, and it being represented that we can receive neither good nor evil but from God, the judge of all, a point acknowledged on both hands, is what renders these descriptions interesting and affecting to us in the highest degree; and the whole affords no contemptible argument of the antiquity of the book. See Peters and Dodd.