Job 20:17

Yes, and that is just where haste generally lands us. It is easy for those who are not in trouble to speak, and to suspect evil of a man that is in the depths. And that is just what this young man — for he was younger than the others — fell into… Did he know of no dealings of God for the trial and good of His children here below?

However sweet evil was to him, and however tightly he held on to it, it was poison inside. God makes him vomit up the riches he devoured with such greed and no scruple. He himself is killed as if by a poisonous bite. Honey and cream may flow in rivulets, brooks, streams, but they yield no pleasure to him. What he had worked for he gives back, and does not swallow it. He takes no joy in the property he traded for. He crushed and abandoned the poor, and seized a house he was not to build. He is cut off before his plans ripen and he can enjoy them.

Zophar next glances at the former prosperity of the wicked. Back then he drank the cup of pleasure as from an overflowing river of honey and cream. He must now give up what he grasped from others, and his riches can bring him no joy. Ahab came down to see the vineyard he gained by murdering Naboth, and there he had to hear the prophet announce his own doom. Like him, this man can get no joy from what he owns.

He has only himself to blame, and is reaping what he sowed. The poison comes from his own insides… His riches, wrongly gained, will be torture to his closing days. All this is solemnly true. God is not arbitrary in the punishment of the wicked. They store up wrath "on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."… How wickedly empty is the talk about God being "too merciful to send men to hell"! Men show no mercy to themselves. They have only themselves to blame for their doom. And infinite love has provided a free remedy, which so many reject — that makes their doom sharper still.

"He will not look upon the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds." That is, Zophar recognised that God delights in doing good. Yes, He does — and not only to the righteous, but to the unthankful and evil too… Out of His own goodness, as our Lord put it so simply and so grandly, He makes His sun rise on the evil as well as on the good. He sends His rain on the just as well as on the unjust. The man who profits from all these benefits and never thinks of God at all is a most wicked man. He is the greatest enemy of God alive on the earth… One word accounts for everything — unbelief.

So the wicked will not see what he depended on in the past, "the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds."… The reason for this, Zophar considers, is that "he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build" (v.19). Of course this may be true of some wicked men, but to charge Job with such a crime was itself a repulsive crime.