Job 27:14

In Job 27 he takes up another subject. It is not the glory of God, but the misery of the hypocrite and his terrible doom. He paints it in stronger colours than they had. Yet he still holds firmly to his own integrity, even though God had not yet cleared him, and they had been unjust.

In the later part of the chapter Job sets out a case with great force. They had it before their eyes just as much as he did, yet he must spell it out for them, since they had failed to lay it before him. It is the end of the godless — a subject he would have avoided if his conscience were not clear. They had toyed with the matter to no purpose. He would teach them about God's hand, and keep back nothing of what is with the Almighty. However many children the godless man has, the sword and hunger come for them. They fall unburied, and even those nearest to them do not mourn.

"This is the portion of a wicked man with God." He has received wealth and pleasure and honour from people. But what a different 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. Death swallows up those who outlive them, and no friend mourns for them — "Their priests fell by the sword, and their widows made no lamentation" (Ps. 78:64).

And even if they go on and have their children multiplied, it will only be deeper sorrow in the end. "If his children are multiplied, it is for the sword, and his descendants have not enough bread," no matter what he may be taking for himself (and so on to the end of verse 19). All this is completely opposed to their reasoning, and in this way Job triumphs over them.

Job now declares the eventual doom of the wicked in language like that of his friends. But unlike them, he sets it against his own eventual end. They had spoken this way to mark Job out as wicked. His account of the wicked and their end actually shows that he cannot be one of them. Job's experience does look like the wicked man's, as in verse 14... Job's children had all died in a sudden disaster (ch. 1:18-19), but Job is looking beyond the present, to the eventual end of the wicked. His thoughts are surely inconsistent, since he had dwelt so much on his own present circumstances that he could hardly see further.

So Job dwells on a sorrow in some ways like his own, and yet how different. He too had lost his children, but was it under the punishing wrath of God?... Job can speak like this about the perishing things of this world's greatness. That shows he knew a far different heritage was his. Let moth and rust destroy what they will — he seems to say that he knows he has a better and more lasting wealth.