Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
Job is answering Zophar, who had just insisted that the triumph of the wicked is always short. Job answers with plain facts: godless men often live long, grow old, and grow strong — and that wrecks his friends' whole theory.
The question aimed at Zophar's rule
Zophar had built his case on occasional, visible acts of judgment. Job's question exposes what that case leaves out.
William KellyZophar looked only at the cases where God brings judgment on some especially wicked men. Such cases do happen now and then... Now what made Job tremble so when he saw wickedness prosper? As he says here, "Why do the wicked live?" He says: "I can understand it up to a point. I can fully understand God casting down wicked men — it is only what they deserve. But that is not what happens. The great majority of them seem to flourish in their wickedness for the time."
Job's real complaint is with God
Job is not scoring a debating point. His spirit is troubled, and his real business is not with the three men in front of him.
William Kelly"As for me, is my complaint against man?" In the middle of all this he has the deep sense of having to do with God, and that is true piety. "And if it were so, why should not my spirit be troubled?" — that is, I do not understand it; that is the thing that makes it so terrible.
The facts Job lays on the table
Long life, old age, and power are only the start of the list. Job traces the same ease through their children, their herds and their deaths. One writer points to where the answer came.
Leslie M. GrantZophar had spoken of the wicked being cut off, but Job now has questions Zophar does not even try to answer. Sometimes wicked men are cut off, but some wicked men live and become old and become mighty in power above others (v.7). Why? Their children often get along well with hardly a setback (v.8). They seem to have nothing to fear, and the discipline of God's government seems not to apply to them (v.9)... In other words, all through their life they know nothing of the painful experiences Job had, and then they die without suffering. Asaph observed this too, as he records in Psalm 73:3-9... He learned that God's accounts are not settled in this life: there is a future to be considered.
Why the wicked are left alone for now
The delay has a reason. This is not the time of judgment. While mercy is running its course, life will look tangled.
J. N. DarbyThis was what Job found so hard to understand — how those who did evil prospered, while the righteous were persecuted. This is just because the time of judgment has not come; the time of mercy is going on now, and we cannot have mercy and judgment at once. So everything is a riddle now. There is too much badness for man to think that things come from God. And there is too much goodness, even in the middle of all the ruin and misery, for him to see how it is not from God.
Where the three friends went wrong
Their whole system assumed that what happens to a man on earth is God's full verdict on him. Here Job is the one judging rightly.
J. N. DarbyThey press the doctrine that God's earthly government is a full measure and display of His righteousness... this doctrine proves they have no idea what God's righteousness is, or what His ways are. It also shows they have no real knowledge of what God is, or of man as a sinner... Although Job was not before God in his estimate of himself, he judges rightly in these respects. He shows that God does make His disapproval of the wicked known. Even so, the circumstances the wicked are often found in overthrow his friends' arguments.
What Job still had to learn
Job is right about the facts and still short of the truth. He admits that God does sometimes strike suddenly. But he has not yet seen the other kind of dealing — the one that explains his own case.
William KellyHe presses the point that the present world is no expression of God's moral government. But he admits that a divine blow falls on men in the middle of their apparent prosperity. In a moment their lamp goes out. Exceptional dealings, then, are allowed. There was another kind of dealing he did not yet see. This is what he had to learn: God acts among His own by way of chastening, trial, or discipline. He does this just as surely as He may lay His hand on the wicked in solemn judgment.
Summary
- The question is honest. Job is not defending the wicked. He is reporting what anyone can see: many godless people prosper for a lifetime.
- The question is not academic. It troubles Job's spirit, because his complaint is not against his friends but has to do with God Himself.
- The reason is timing. The wicked are left alone because the time of judgment has not come. Mercy and judgment cannot run at once, so life stays a riddle.
- The friends' error is method. They read a man's prosperity or trouble as God's full verdict. That misjudged both God and man.
- Job's own lesson is still ahead. He sees that this world is no display of God's government. He has not yet seen that God disciplines His own as surely as He judges the wicked.