Job 21:5-15 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Mark me, and be admonished, &c.— The coldest reader cannot be insensible of the beauties of the poetry in this speech of Job. We will not, therefore, attempt to point them out, but attend to the thread of reasoning. As Job well knew that the account he was about to give of the prosperity of wicked men, however necessary to his argument, would have something shocking in it to the ears of those to whom it was addressed; the delicacy with which he introduces it is inimitable: Mark me, &c.—wherefore do the wicked live, (Job 21:7.)—become old, yea, are mighty in power? As if he had said, "That thus it is, in fact, is plain: with awe and reverence I speak it; but, as for you, I am persuaded that you will never be able, upon your principles, to account for it." The description which follows, of a prosperous estate, is such as might indeed justly create envy, were a wicked man in any estate 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, and their children dance: one sees them, as it were, tripping upon the green, with the flush of health and joy in their looks: They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ; 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; according to Schultens, 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 scarcely any thing more to be admired in it, than the variety of descriptions that are given us of human life, in its most exalted prosperity on the one hand, and its deepest distresses on the other; for this is what their subject leads 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 almost every speech, 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, the religious cast thrown over them, considered as the dispensations of Providence, 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, if well considered, affords no contemptible argument of the antiquity of the book. See Peters, and the next note. Mr. Heath renders the 8th verse, Their power is established on a firm footing; their people are in their presence, and their offspring before their eyes.