“This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage that oppressors receive from the Almighty:
Job's friends kept describing the ruin that falls on a wicked man, and kept aiming that description at Job. Here he takes up their theme himself: what God hands out to the wicked, and to the violent men who crush others.
Why Job takes up this subject
Job stops defending himself and starts teaching. One writer traces what pushed him into it.
William KellyThey had proved themselves incapable of applying it fairly. So he would let them know the sure end of ungodliness: disasters, outside and inside, for the wicked man's children as for himself. They go on until every trace of ill-gotten gain vanishes. Then death opens the doom he cannot avoid — the doom of the man whom men, if not the wind itself, hiss out of his place, delighting in his destruction.
Borrowing his accusers' words
Job had argued with his friends for chapters. Now he suddenly sounds like them. One writer reads the change as a deliberate move.
Samuel RidoutHere we reach the explanation of the apparent change in Job's attitude. Up to now he had resisted the friends in their argument about the wicked. They always linked him with their descriptions. He will now take up the same language himself. It shows how impossible it was to confuse a man like himself with the wicked they identified him with. It becomes in this way a most powerful reply to their charges.
"Portion with God" — what the Almighty hands out
The verse names two kinds of men — the wicked, and the violent who crush others — and gives them one end. It names a share and an inheritance, and both come from God's hand, not man's. Whatever the wicked man collected from people, this is what waits for him from the One he despised.
Samuel Ridout"This is the portion of a wicked man with God." He has received wealth and pleasure and honour at the hands of man. But how different an inheritance they will get from the Almighty whom they have despised! Have his children multiplied? They are left to the devouring sword. Did they once live in luxury? They will come to lack bread.
The same sentence in another mouth
Almost this exact sentence had already closed one of Zophar's earlier speeches. One writer weighs the words and the aim separately.
Leslie M. GrantSo Zophar ends his speech, "This is the portion from God for a wicked man, the heritage appointed to him by God." There was a good deal of truth in what he said, but his inference that Job belonged to such a class of evildoers was not only unfair; it was inexcusably false.
A true description of judgment turns cruel the moment someone pins it on the wrong man.
A far different inheritance
Job's losses looked much like the ruin he is reciting. One writer presses the difference.
Samuel RidoutJob dwells on a sorrow that in some ways looks like his own, and yet how different it is. He too had lost his children — but was that under the punishing wrath of God? And did Job act like these wicked men he describes here? They may gather silver and wealth like dust, only to have the righteous enjoy it — "The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just." Was Job's case like that? ... Job can speak this way about the perishing things of this world's greatness. That shows he was conscious of a far different inheritance for himself. Let moth and rust destroy — he seems to say that he knows he has a better and lasting possession.
The teacher who still needs teaching
Just before this verse, Job offers to teach his friends about the hand of God. One writer notes that the offer cuts both ways.
Leslie M. GrantJob therefore realised that his friends needed teaching about the hand of God, so he would teach them. It was true that they needed such teaching. Yet Job himself needed a different kind of teaching than he thought his friends needed. "The hand of God" is an enormous subject. What Job knew about God's hand he would not hide, but there was much indeed he did not know, as we all must recognise in our ignorance.
Summary
- Portion given. Both halves of the verse hand something over: a share and an inheritance. The Giver is God Himself.
- Portion misapplied. Zophar had already used these words as a weapon. The teaching was mostly true; the charge against Job was false.
- Portion reclaimed. Job repeats his friends' description of the wicked. No honest listener could place him in that group.
- Portion contrasted. He watches the wealth and houses of the wicked crumble without alarm. He counts on a lasting possession of his own.
- Portion still unfinished. Job offers to teach others about God's hand, and still needs teaching himself. The subject is larger than anyone who handles it.