Job 20:28

In the end it is not wealth but total darkness that is stored up for his treasures. He is heaping it up for the day of wrath. A fire that no one has fanned, but that burns from within, will consume him. Whatever escaped earlier judgments will then fare badly in his tent. Job had appealed to the heavens and the earth to testify to his innocence (Job 16:18 and following). Instead of doing that, they must give their evidence firmly against him. The increase of his house departs too, like fleeting things, in the day of divine wrath.

This doom is final, with no gleam of hope beyond. The heavens are against him. Their holy light only exposes his wrongdoing. Job had appealed to heaven and earth to witness to his righteousness (Job 16:18-19), but Zophar hints at the exact opposite. The heavens only declare his sin, and earth rises up in the judgment against him.

He denounces evil fiercely, leaving no room for doubt that he means Job. He pictures the certain doom of the wicked in language so violent that it soon uses up all he has in mind. This seems to be why he ends all he has to say with this second speech. The fiercer the fire, the more quickly it burns out. All that he says is true; his own unpardonable error is that he seeks to apply it to a righteous man.

Reading 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. The fact is that the man who bases his argument on his own intuition is always very dogmatic and sure of himself.

Zophar, therefore, holds to this. The great fact is that there is a righteous God above, and there are unrighteous, wicked people below, and God always deals with these wicked people now. That was not true. God has always let a large part of the world seem to prosper in their evil, and the reason is that the time of judgment has not yet come.

Zophar presents to Job, in the strongest way, the utter and overwhelming ruin of the wicked. He denounces him without pity. Job replies (Job 21) by detailing the prosperity of the wicked, to show that Zophar must be in error.

Nor can "riches" avail to avert or stay God's displeasure, however they may shield and deliver in man's day. "Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death."

Zophar has completed his terrible charges. He has hunted down without pity a bruised man who seemed to be dying. He has refused Job's appeal for pity. He has ignored Job's declaration of his unshaken integrity. He has pressed his suspicion with an iron hand into the soul of the poor sufferer — and all this under the plausible-sounding plea of piety pleading for God! However it may end, we feel that no help is to be had from Zophar and those like him. And we are not sorry that we will hear him no more, until he comes in a very different spirit to ask the prayers of the friend he has slandered.