Job 21:27

He fully realised the force of their words. They implied that he must have been guilty of terrible unrighteousness and sin. Yet all the time he looked like a deeply godly man.

He now declares their purpose, which up to this point they had only hinted at — that Job was proof of how sound their argument was. And look, they say, at what has become of him! He throws their insinuations back with a bold question. Have they not learned from observers everywhere that the wicked man is "spared" in the day of calamity — "to the day of destruction"? (Older translations say "reserved" here.) He is so powerful that nobody dares charge him with his sin, or give him the punishment he deserves. Sadly, all of this is only too common in our own day.

Here you see he now comes back to their fault: the narrowness of their view. It is wrong to let people suspect evil without the slightest ground in fact for it. No, we are called to live what we know; we are called to speak when we do know; but where we do not know, we look to God.

These friends all treated the present time as adequate proof of what God thought about men. If He thinks we are walking well, we flourish. If we come into trouble, it is because we are bad people. That was their theory, an utterly wrong and corrupt theory.

The friends put God's reckoning too early. Sadly, they were blind. They watched the present, like the Christian world, instead of waiting, like Job, for the resurrection and the kingdom. In this world the blow may fall on the man's children, not on the man himself. Job looks on to the judgment, when the evil-doer must suffer. So let no one misjudge God's ways. Let no one draw unfounded conclusions from the way He rules the world 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 except the haste and folly of those who judge before the time. Such were their thoughts and plots to the wrong of himself.

Underlying all that the friends said was a wretched suspicion, growing into a certainty, that Job is a hypocrite. For this they had not the slightest proof, but everything to the contrary. Their theory forced them to it. For the sake of that theory they trample underfoot all natural and gracious affection. Nothing wounds an honest, loving man like suspicions with no ground, and the charges that grow out of them.

But even now, is not suspicion of others all too common? One person fails in business, has illness in his family, or loses loved ones. People jump to the conclusion that God is chastening him for some imagined faults. How cruel this is! It goes against the plain direction: "Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three shall a charge be established." Let us be slow to suspect. Let us be slower still to charge unknown evil, and leave that to the Searcher of hearts. If He calls on us to name evil, it is evil He has unmistakably brought to light.