Job 20:29

"This is the wicked man's portion from God, the heritage decreed for him by God" (v. 29). Zophar has finished his terrible charges. He has pursued without pity a bruised and apparently dying man. He has refused Job's appeal for pity. He has ignored Job's declaration of unshaken integrity. He has pressed his suspicion with an iron hand into the soul of the poor sufferer — and all this under the plausible excuse of piety pleading for God! However it ends, we feel that no help is to be had from Zophar and men like him. And we are not sorry that we will hear no more from him — until he comes back in a very different spirit, to ask for the prayers of the friend he has slandered.

This section presses Zophar's earlier words harder still. It declares God's total, unrelieved wrath against a wicked man. "Total darkness is reserved for his treasures" (v. 26). Total darkness will indeed be the case for all who reject the grace of God in Christ Jesus — "the gloom of utter darkness" (Jude 13). But Job had said, "In my flesh I shall see God" (ch. 19:26). He certainly did not expect that darkness forever… So Zophar ends his discourse: "This is the wicked man's portion from God, the heritage decreed for him by God" (v. 29). There was a good measure of truth in what he said. But to count Job among that class of evil-doers was not only unfair; it was inexcusably false.

Things that are true, but misunderstood and misapplied, may do more harm than many a false thing. Misapplied truth gives the apparent authority of God to an error, and that error carries all the more weight because it comes as the truth. Say a foolish thing, or one that is clearly false, and people despise it. But no believer can treat the truth of God lightly. So someone may use the truth of God wrongly. He may apply it to crush a person who at that very moment is an object of intense interest to God. How foreign and offensive that is to God's mind! How hateful that His name should be twisted like this!

In Zophar there is not the slightest sense that God has chastening dealings with those He loves during this time of pilgrimage. Yet this is exactly what God does. This is what He is carrying on today with you and me. … The Father watches over our faults, and He prunes the vine — every branch of it. He prunes us so that we may bear more fruit.

"This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive from the Almighty." And even if they go on and their children multiply, it will only mean deeper sorrow in the end… All of this is completely opposed to their reasoning. In this way Job triumphs over them.