His children will seek the favor of the poor, and his hands will give back his wealth.
Zophar is answering Job, and he paints the ruin of a wicked man in hard strokes. Is the picture true, and did it fit the suffering man it was aimed at?
Where the verse sits
The picture runs from the man's highest hopes down to his grave. This verse sits near the bottom. One writer follows the movement from the man's ambitions to his grave:
Samuel RidoutZophar goes on with his picture. It is poetic but terribly stern — solemnly beautiful, if we can forget his purpose... In his imagination his hopes may have risen to the heavens, and his head to the clouds. But he burns away like fuel stored up for the winter... His children give his ill-gotten gains to the poor — reluctantly enough, we may well believe. His bones, once full of youthful vigour, now lie low in their parent dust. The section begins with heaven and ends with the grave!
The wording is disputed
The second half of the verse is not easy to pin down, and honest readers should know it. Commentators differ on exactly what the children do and whose hands give back the wealth:
Leslie M. GrantWhy "his children seek the favour of the poor" may not be too easily understood. There is also some question about the translation, "his hands restore his wealth."
Another writer reads it as Zophar's guess about the family left behind:
William KellyHe supposes that God would still keep up the family, and would deal with his children — that they would have to give back some of the ill-gotten goods their father had acquired.
Payback that reaches the family
Zophar's logic is that greed carries its own poison inside it:
William KellyRetribution sets in for his children as well as himself. How could it be otherwise? However sweet it tasted to him, and however tightly he held it, evil was poison inside. God makes him vomit up the riches he devoured so greedily and without scruple. He himself dies as if from a venomous bite... What he had worked for he gives back, and does not swallow it. He takes no joy in the property he traded for. He ground down and abandoned the poor, and seized a house he was not to build. He was cut off before his plans were ripe and he could enjoy them.
A narrow view of God's ways
Zophar assumed God's dealings always run this one way — swift collapse for the guilty, visible to all. That assumption is the flaw in the speech:
William Kelly"He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found." That was true of some cases; but where were the eyes, where was the discernment of Zophar? And this was all that he saw going on in the world! It was a very narrow way of looking at the dealings of God.
Aimed at the wrong man
The description itself is not the problem. The problem is the target, and the coldness of the aim:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe description of the wicked is great. No one can find fault with what he says about those who are ungodly... His children remain poverty stricken. He may swallow down riches, but he vomits them up again... But the serious mistake Zophar made is twofold. Job had pleaded for pity. Not a word of pity comes from Zophar's lips. The whole speech is meant to tell Job "You are that man!" And the second mistake: he never weighs Job's own words for a moment. They could not come from the lips of an ungodly person, but from someone who knows God.
Job's reply
Job does not deny the judgment. He answers Zophar on timing:
Samuel RidoutJob fully admits that the sin of the wicked will be shown up in the end. But it is so often seen in the children instead of themselves... In opposition to Zophar, he reminds him "how rarely is the candle of the wicked put out"; how seldom does calamity break in on them... Job reminds his hearers that this seldom takes place in the present life. It waits for the "judgment."
Summary
- Height. The passage lifts the wicked man to the clouds only to drop him: it begins with heaven and ends with the grave.
- Handback. Greed has to give up what it swallowed. The wealth goes back, and the children beg favour from the very poor their father crushed.
- Hardness. Job had pleaded for pity. Zophar's speech gives him none, only the verdict "You are that man!"
- Half-truth. His rule — sin now, ruin now — describes some cases, but it is a very narrow view of how God deals with people.
- Hereafter. Job's answer is that the wicked often are not cut down in this life. The reckoning waits for the judgment.