Bible Commentary - Job 21

In this chapter, Job discusses the meaning of punishment and whether it matters for a man to be punished after he dies.

Verses 2-6 are a fairly standard introduction to Job’s response, with the usual “let me speak because I too have wisdom” mentality.

Verses 7-18 establishes that the wicked frequently prosper, and do not face the wrath of God during their lifetimes.  This is a striking claim, since it contradicts the many statements earlier in the book about how God destroys the wicked.  Part of me wonders if Job’s friends would not so readily agree that the wicked prosper, but Job seems to go on anyway and argues both sides, stating what he thinks his friends would reply, and then answering those replies.  It’s a peculiar moment in the book, but it opens up some really interesting topics for discussion so I’ll just leave it at that and move on.

Verses 19-34 is addressing, in various ways, the idea that the wicked may suffer through the destruction of their inheritance after their death.  This is Job stating his friends’ position as a sort of strawman argument, before offering his own response.

In verse 19, the idea is that a man’s “iniquity” is visited upon his children and that the things he built in his life would not endure.  Job’s response is that nobody really cares what happens to their children after death, and that the wicked would not feel the sting of their punishment if they don’t see it happen in their lifetime.

There is an obvious assumption based into Job’s discourse.  The assumption is that there is no such thing as punishment after death.  In fact, Job’s point in verses 23-26 is that the satisfied and the bitter “lie down in the dust together” (v. 26) with no meaningful distinction between them.  Death comes for everyone, and while we may applaud the life of one person and detest the life of another, the dead are oblivious to our feelings about them.  This is one of the basic principles of Jewish thought regarding Sheol; it is a place of rest and peace, because one is rendered oblivious to the goings-on of the world above.  Jewish thought regards the dead as sharing an experience analogous to a dead body.  A dead body is quiet, still and unmoving.  It is at rest in a literal sense.  These literal features are extrapolated into metaphysical properties, with a dead person’s soul also regarded as “at rest”, freed from the strains and anxiety that accompany life on earth.

This is the big reason why Job was so deeply longing for the release of death in e.g. Job 14:12-13, but even more directly in Job 3:13-19.  Job (and the culture he embodies) views death as like going to sleep and never waking up, a restfulness that renders us insensible to the affairs of the world.  In that sense, it is also a great leveler because no matter what kind of life a person has lived, we all become equal in death.

Job’s basic claim, then, is that the only meaningful punishment is what happens when we are alive on earth.  This is when we are “awake” and can experience pain, fear and disgrace, all of which Job believes is the rightful punishment of the wicked.

Verse 28 is another brief statement of how Job anticipates his friends’ arguments  Basically what Job is saying is that when we investigate the “house of the nobleman” and the “tent of the wicked”, we will find that God has blessed the house of righteous people while demolishing the tents of wicked people.  There is a subtle point here which is that similarly to the tabernacle/temple dichotomy that I addressed a long time ago, the “tent” of the wicked implies a temporary existence.  A tent might be here one day and then taken down the next.  The “house” of the righteous implies permanence, because the righteous will endure and leave a lasting inheritance.

However, Job sees all of this as another post-mortem reality, and in verses 30-34 he establishes this as a “vain comfort” (v. 34) because when the wicked is dead and buried, covered with clods of earth, he will no longer experience the reality of his punishment.  Instead, “all men will follow after him” (v. 33) and even the death of the wicked is not a fate unique to them.

Okay, so having summarized the chapter, there is an interesting theological question to be answered.  It is about the notion of how God punishes the wicked and what constitutes meaningful punishment.  The philosophy of Job, which I described above, is that there is no such thing as punishment in the afterlife, because all the dead are at peace in death and only what happens during their life on earth is meaningful.  On the other hand, Job’s friends are saying that there is no such thing as punishment in the afterlife, but the wicked can be punished after their death when God visits the iniquity of the wicked on their children (v. 19).  This is a manner of indirect punishment, not by punishing the man himself but by punishing his household and destroying his inheritance.  In various places in the bible, a household is viewed as a metaphysical extension of a man, so this is not a unique perspective, but Job nevertheless disagrees with it.

The operating assumption in both cases is that it’s only what happens on earth that matters, which is itself quite an interesting predicate considering in other places Job implies that God would in some mysterious way honor or restore him after death (for an example of this, see Job 19:25-27.  See also Job 14:14-15).  Of course, these references to Job’s life after death are oblique and sparse, so while I don’t want to minimize them, it is clear that they are not Job’s primary concern or emphasis; quite the opposite.  It seems like a contradiction, but one with no easy resolution given the sparsity of material that Job presents about the putative afterlife and his thoughts on the subject.

Instead, it shows that in Job, as in many other places in the OT, it is life on earth that is regarded as the chief domain of God’s operation as judge and king.  The other clear example (though one could find many) is the notions of blessing and punishment that permeate Deuteronomy, which are focused perhaps without exception on material outcomes.  For instance, Deuteronomy 28 is a grandiose chapter, laying out starkly the contrast between obedience to and rebellion against the law of God.  Such outcomes are framed entirely in material terms, such as blessings on the “basket and kneading bowl” (Deut 28:5), in battle, offspring, and so on.  These are outcomes that are visible, tangible and in many cases measurable.  This is a worldview that seems very familiar and accepted by Job and his friends, who also seem to think that only visible, physical outcomes matter when it comes to God’s justice.

The notion that there could be rewards or punishment after death is a concept only loosely embedded in the text here, and is largely the subject of later revelation (what I have elsewhere described as progressive revelation).  To Job and his friends, the concept of death, and whatever existence may continue after death, is closely entangled with the concept of sleep.  Sleep and death bear an outwards similarity, and death is considered as like falling asleep and never waking up.  By common experience, they largely agree that they are neither blessed nor punished by God while they are sleeping, so it stands to reason that they would not experience such things upon death either.  As such, this analogous reasoning rules out the possibility of a post-mortem judgment by God of human behavior.

In this context, it seems like Job and his friends agree that sometimes wicked men are not punished during their lifetimes, and where they disagree is that his friends think it is meaningful and appropriate for God to punish these men by extension, laying down justice upon their children and estates after death.  Job does not find that appropriate because he thinks the “peace of death” will leave them unaware of their supposed punishment, which defeats the purpose of punishment in the first place.

Later theological development in the bible will twist the argument a bit by framing things in terms of judgment after death, but for the time being Job and his friends are left at an impasse.

In the next chapter, Job’s first friend Eliphaz takes his third and final turn responding to Job.