All darkness [shall be] hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
Ver. 26. All darkness shall be hid in his secret places] That is, saith Diodati, wheresoever he shall think to find a place of safeguard there shall he meet with some horrible mischance. Men that are proscribed, and sought for to death, usually hide themselves, as various Jews did in privies at the last destruction of Jerusalem, and were thence drawn out to the slaughter. The duke of Buckingham, in Richard III's time, was betrayed by his servant Bannister. Appian telleth of a Roman hid by his wife, and then exposed by his wife to the murderer, to whom she soon after also was married (De Bell. Civ. Rom.). Others render and sense the words thus, The wicked shall come into darkness, propter abscondita, for his secret sins. And others thus, All darkness is laid up for his hid treasures; that is, God or men have taken order that he shall lose his riches as well as his life, though he hide them never so secretly.
A fire not blown shall consume him] i.e. say some, calamities whose causes shall be unknown, and shall proceed immediately from God. See Isaiah 30:33. Many of the Greeks interpret this text of hell, with its unquenchable fire, Matthew 3:12, which being created by God, and kindled by his breath, that is, by his word, it burneth everlastingly. Albeit God many times punisheth wicked men here with fire from heaven, as he did Sodom, Nadab and Abihu, those captains of fifties with their companies, 2Ki 1:9-12 Tremellius rendereth it thus, A fire consumeth him, non accensum flatis, I say him, not kindled by blowing, but burning of his own accord, as stubble fully dried, or hurds, or sear wood, Ut stipulae aut stupae. Ut cremium aut arefactum lignum. See Nahum 1:10. See Trapp on " Nah 1:10 "
It shall go ill with him that is left] His posterity shall never prosper, but be rooted out. Eliphaz and Bildad had said the same thing; and all to pay poor Job, whose family was now ruined. It shall surely go ill with him, or, He shall be wringed, saith Broughton; alluding to the likeness of the sound as well as the sense of the Hebrew word.