Job 24:18

Then Job expands on the allowed evil of men, who profit by it shamelessly. Who can count up the kinds of human fraud and force, of corruption and violence, outside and inside? Worst of all, they fall on the defenceless and the poor. The country and the city, the desert and the sea are the varied scenes of an equally varied wickedness, where men embezzle and plunder. In the homes of civilization, the darkness before dawn calls them out to schemes and crimes just as dark, and God gives no notice of it. The restless sea gives room for a deeper restlessness. Yet they die, and receive the same burial as everyone else.

And how does this course of wickedness end? Does God come in and make an example of them? Not always. On the contrary, they pass away like a swiftly flowing stream. They leave their inheritance to receive the curse of men, instead of taking the just punishment themselves. "The gallows is cheated," and the evildoers have gone from their vineyards, where they might have been dealt with as they deserved… The general thought of this part of Job's reply is that in this life, and often right up to the end, men escape the penalties they deserve.

How many since Job have felt the need for decisive action to curb the many glaring evils that plague society. Should not their punishment be swift? "Their portion should be cursed in the earth" (v.18), Job thinks — so that others would not turn into the way of their vineyards. That is, they would not follow the wicked because they prosper.

Light is he on the face of the waters; the portion of those on the land is despised, he turns not to the way of the vineyards.

It does appear that in the rest of the chapter Job is recounting the evils that were filling the earth in his day. They were going on unjudged until the grave closed the history of the wicked. This gives point and force to the question he asked. The latter part of verse 1 would mean, "Why do the God-fearing not see days of judgment falling from God on the heads of the godless?" A very fitting question, close to the one raised in Psalm 73. At the end of the chapter Job, as well as the Psalmist, sees judgment finally coming upon them.

There are these times of evil. God is a moral governor, and He takes notice of all evil — even the words of people, since words reveal the secrets of the heart. How is it that He allows evil to pass as He does, and that there is no day of retribution now? Well, we can perfectly answer that. It is all reserved for Christ… All judgment is committed to the Son, because He is the Son of man, and as the Son of man He has been hated.

Unless our self is judged — unless there is continual self-judgment going on day by day — we get hard. We lose the freshness of the truth. We lose its power in our souls. So we may grow very self-satisfied, because we know that we believe. That is just where the friends of Job were… Now Job faces this question. If the times are so bad, why does the day of retribution not come? We do not see it. It is coming. It awaits the only One who can perfectly deal with evil.