He swallows down riches and vomits them up again; God casts them out of his belly.
Zophar is midway through his second speech, painting the wicked man as one who gulps down wealth only to have it forced back out of him. The picture is vivid, and on its own it is true. But Zophar aims it at a suffering man, and that raises a sharper question: what do you do with true words used as weapons?
The image: swallowed wealth brought back up
The whole verse runs on one picture: eating. What goes down does not stay down.
Leslie M. GrantZophar continues his vivid description of the wicked man. He says the man swallows down riches he gained by crime, but vomits them up again (v.15). He is like a drunkard shaking in withdrawal. At first when he drinks, the pleasure of it deceives him, and his pleasure soon turns to bitterness. He himself has been guilty of sucking the poison of cobras. The results can only be his own fault: he destroys himself (v.16).
The pleasure comes first, and it deceives. The poison is already inside the man, and it is his own doing.
God's own hand in the reversal
The second half of the verse changes the actor. The man swallows; God empties him. This loss is not bad luck.
William KellyHowever sweet evil was to him, and however tightly he held on to it, it was poison inside him. God makes him vomit up the riches he devoured so greedily and dishonestly, and he himself is killed as if by a poisonous bite. Honey and cream may flow in streams and rivers, but they give him no pleasure. What he worked for he gives back, and he does not swallow it.
Another writer links the verse to a warning: a man may hide the truth from people, but never from God.
Alfred E. BouterThere was no fruit for God, although He had been waiting for so long (Lev. 18:28; 20:22; compare also Job 20:15b). We may try to cover up the real situation with all kinds of things but we cannot deceive the Lord (Gal. 6:7).
Judgment that comes from the man himself
The verse does not describe a punishment brought in from outside. The man swallowed his own ruin.
Samuel RidoutHe has only himself to blame, and he is reaping what he sowed. The poison comes from inside his own body... His riches, gained by evil, will be torture to his last days. All of this is true, and it is serious. God is not random when He punishes the wicked. They store up "wrath ... on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."
True — but not the whole truth
Zophar treats this collapse as the outcome for every wicked man. Commentators point out that God does not deal with every person the same way.
Samuel RidoutBut this is not the universal rule, or even the ordinary one. Many evil men go on for years in outward prosperity. They pass on to their account in another world with little visible change... God varies His dealings with men, so that in every possible way they have no excuse. He has tried swift judgment, long patience, chastening and prosperity, so that by some means men might come to repentance.
The barb hidden in the description
The speech never names Job. Even so, it works as a charge against him, not just a portrait of a wicked man.
F. B. HoleReading Job 20 we can see how underlying his statements, as to various acts of wickedness, was the insinuation that Job had been guilty of them. He was the man who had worked to swallow down other people's property and to oppress the poor. He was the one who had seized by force a house he had not built, and so on. The fact is that a man who bases his argument on his own instinct is always very sure of himself.
The warning for anyone who quotes truth at a sufferer
This is where the speech turns on us.
William KellyThings that are true, but misunderstood and wrongly applied, can do more harm than many a false thing. Misapplied truth gives an error the apparent authority of God. That error carries all the more weight because it comes as the truth. If someone says a foolish thing, or a plainly false one, people dismiss it. But no believer can brush aside the truth of God. So if the truth of God is used wrongly — if it is used to crush someone God cares about deeply at that moment — how foreign and offensive that is to His mind!
Summary
- Swallowed. Wealth taken wrongly goes down sweet; the pleasure is the deception, not the reward.
- Soured. What went down turns to poison inside the man. The judgment grows out of his own choices; God does not punish at random.
- Surrendered. The verse names God as the one who empties him out; no cover-up survives His inspection.
- Only part. Commentators note that this swift collapse is not the universal rule. God also uses long patience to bring men to repentance.
- Misaimed. Zophar's true picture became a false accusation the moment he aimed it at Job. Truth used to crush a sufferer offends God.