You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’ Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
Job's three friends keep insisting that God punishes the wicked in this life. He answers with their own saying about guilt stored up for a man's children: why not make the guilty man himself pay and know it?
The debate behind the verse
Job's friends were not lying. They were saying half of what was true, and Job held the other half.
William KellyWhat Zophar and the others press was only half a truth. And half a truth never sanctifies. What you leave out may be just as important, or even more important, and that was the difference. For all his faults, Job was holding on to the truth, and he looked at it with a larger heart and a more awakened conscience… "God lays up his iniquity for his children; he rewards him, and he shall know it. His eyes shall see his destruction" — Job allowed it might run in the family — "and he shall drink of the wrath of the Almighty."
Guilt stored up for the children
The saying itself is not false. God stated the same principle about Himself, and it lands on parents as a warning.
Leslie M. GrantIt can rightly be said, however, that "God lays up one's iniquity for his children." That is, the children may later suffer for their fathers' sins. Exodus 34:7 shows this, where God speaks of "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." This is a warning to parents. Their children will suffer the consequences of their parents' wickedness, and God knows how to repay in a fitting way (v.19).
The word is "iniquity"
God's own words to Moses name one thing in particular that He visits on later generations.
H J VineWhen Jehovah declared His gracious Name to Moses, He gave him a partial view of His glory. There He named iniquity — not transgression, and not sin — as what He would visit "on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Ex. 34:7).
That word has a definite sense.
H J VineIniquity has to do with perversion: a twisting of any system or order God has established, and of the truth He has made known. The Hebrew word used is avon, which means perversity.
Fact or demand?
Commentators differ on how to read this verse and the next. Is Job stating a fact, or asking God to act? The wording these writers use states it flatly, while the ESV above gives the first line as the friends' own saying. Either way, the man himself is not let off — he will know it.
Samuel RidoutVerses 19 and 20 state the facts: God lays up the iniquity of the wicked for the children. (Another translation puts these two verses as a wish rather than a fact.) In the end he will see the result of his own evil, though the day is long delayed.
Why the wicked go untouched now
Job's friends read present comfort as proof of God's approval. The mistake was one of timing.
William KellyIt may fall on his children, not on the man himself, in this world. Job looks on to the judgment, when the evil-doer must suffer. So let no one misjudge God's ways, or draw groundless conclusions from the way He governs now. Look at these two men, each with a full cup, one of happiness, the other of misery; both lying dead together. Appearances prove nothing but the haste and folly of those who judge before the time.
The rule Job's friends broke
Job had no full answer to his own suffering. He still had enough to correct the men sitting in front of him.
Samuel RidoutSince this is so, it hardly suits his friends to lay down a fixed rule. They said that in this life judgment was always a sign of sin, and prosperity a sign of righteousness, in the people it fell on. Job had reached no answer to his own problem. Even so, he could urge his friends to "judge nothing before the time."
Summary
- Stored — The guilt is laid up, not lost. God keeps an accurate account even when nothing appears to happen.
- Spread — Stored guilt reaches the next generation. Children can suffer the consequences of a parent's wickedness, so the verse warns every parent.
- Specific — What God said He would visit is iniquity: the Hebrew avon, perversity. That is a twisting of the order God set up, not every sin alike.
- Settled later — Job asks that the man himself know it. The payment comes, but the day is long delayed. The friends' error was reading present comfort as God's verdict.
- Suspend judgment — Judge nothing before the time. Prosperity is no proof of righteousness, and trouble is no proof of sin. Two men die together, one happy, one in misery, and appearances have proved nothing.