14 And they say to God, `Turn aside from us, And the knowledge of Thy ways We have not desired.
Those saying to God, `Turn aside from us,' And what doth the Mighty One to them?
Because that they have hated knowledge, And the fear of Jehovah have not chosen.
He said in his heart, `God hath forgotten, He hath hid His face, He hath never seen.'
Fear of Jehovah `is' a beginning of knowledge, Wisdom and instruction fools have despised!
Each of them with a hook he hath brought up, He doth catch it in his net, and gathereth it in his drag, Therefore he doth joy and rejoice.
and having seen Jesus, and having cried out, he fell before him, and with a loud voice, said, `What -- to me and to thee, Jesus, Son of God Most High? I beseech thee, mayest thou not afflict me!'
`And this is the judgment, that the light hath come to the world, and men did love the darkness rather than the light, for their works were evil; for every one who is doing wicked things hateth the light, and doth not come unto the light, that his works may not be detected;
`And because I say the truth, ye do not believe me. Who of you doth convict me of sin? and if I speak truth, wherefore do ye not believe me? he who is of God, the sayings of God he doth hear; because of this ye do not hear, because of God ye are not.'
And, according as they did not approve of having God in knowledge, God gave them up to a disapproved mind, to do the things not seemly;
because the mind of the flesh `is' enmity to God, for to the law of God it doth not subject itself,
and in all deceitfulness of the unrighteousness in those perishing, because the love of the truth they did not receive for their being saved, and because of this shall God send to them a working of delusion, for their believing the lie, that they may be judged -- all who did not believe the truth, but were well pleased in the unrighteousness.
for there shall be a season when the sound teaching they will not suffer, but according to their own desires to themselves they shall heap up teachers -- itching in the hearing, and indeed, from the truth the hearing they shall turn away, and to the fables they shall be turned aside.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Job 21
Commentary on Job 21 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 21
This is Job's reply to Zophar's discourse, in which he complains less of his own miseries than he had done in his former discourses (finding that his friends were not moved by his complaints to pity him in the least), and comes closer to the general question that was in dispute between him and them, Whether outward prosperity, and the continuance of it, were a mark of the true church and the true members of it, so that the ruin of a man's prosperity is sufficient to prove him a hypocrite, though no other evidence appear against him: this they asserted, but Job denied.
Job 21:1-6
Job here recommends himself, both his case and his discourse, both what he suffered and what he said, to the compassionate consideration of his friends.
Job 21:7-16
All Job's three friends, in their last discourses, had been very copious in describing the miserable condition of a wicked man in this world. "It is true,' says Job, "remarkable judgments are sometimes brought upon notorious sinners, but not always; for we have many instances of the great and long prosperity of those that are openly and avowedly wicked; though they are hardened in their wickedness by their prosperity, yet they are still suffered to prosper.'
Job 21:17-26
Job had largely described the prosperity of wicked people; now, in these verses,
Job 21:27-34
In these verses,