Job 20:2 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Therefore do my thoughts— Verily the emotions of my thoughts cause me to reply, even because there is some sensibility in me. This translation is agreeable to the Hebrew, and throws much light on the passage. Zophar means, that, as he had some modesty left, he could not bear to have so much reproach thrown on him without notice. Perhaps, too, he intends a reflection on Job, as if he was deficient in that virtue. Thus this adversary of Job, who, as we have before observed, seems to have been of the most violent temper of the three, instead of being convinced by his appeal in the foregoing chapter, immediately turns the argument upon him; as if he had said, "Since you have mentioned the future judgment, give me leave to put you in mind of what history informs us from the beginning of the world, that the triumphing of the wicked is but short, and the joy of the hypocrite (the sycophant, or false accuser) only for a moment; Job 20:5 short, in respect of that swift destruction, which sometimes befals them here; but shorter still, compared with that futurity which we all expect:" for he seems to have an eye to both in this speech. The words of the 4th verse seem plainly to refer to the history of the first man, whose joy was short indeed, for he was judged and sentenced soon after he had sinned. But the following part of the speech gives us, I think, a very lively description of the effect which the consideration of a future judgment usually has upon the minds of wicked men; filling them with the greatest horrors in the midst of their enjoyments. Though it may not always restrain men from oppression, yet it makes their children seek to please the poor, by restoring to them that whereof their fathers had unjustly spoiled them: nay, sometimes the wicked wretch himself shall be so touched in conscience, that his own hand shall restore what he had taken; Job 20:10. His children shall seek, &c. He goes on in nearly the same strain to the end of the chapter; from a review of which we see that this speech of Zophar does not describe the punishment of the wicked to be just such a state as Job then laboured under, as some would have us think, meaning a state of outward calamity. Some strokes of this kind, indeed, appear to be mixed with it: but what he chiefly labours to describe is, a state of inward terror and perplexity, arising from a sense of guilt, and the apprehension of that future judgment which Job had mentioned in the conclusion of his speech. In short, he takes occasion from the mention of it to describe, with all the force of his eloquence, the anxiety and distraction which the thoughts of it do sometimes create in the bosom of a wicked man; and, as he still suspected Job for such, he tries, by this tragical description, if it were yet possible, to scare him into a confession. So that they who imagine that Job's friends in their following speeches take no notice of his famous protestation in the last chapter, seem quite to have overlooked the plain drift of this speech of Zophar, which contains a very elegant description of the restless state of wicked men, and their inward horrors and anguish arising from this very persuasion of a future judgment. See Heath and Peters.