Job 20
Zophar: Wicked people love to sin
"Wicked" Job
1Zophar from Naamah [1] said:2Okay, that bothers me.
I need to answer that.
3You insulted me
And I feel compelled to push back.
4There’s something you should know
Because it has always been this way,
Since humans set foot on this earth.
5Wicked people get to celebrate,
But for only a short time.
6They might party from valley to mountaintop,
Till they’ve got their head in the clouds.
7But they’re going to disappear one day,
Just like their crap [2] does.
People will remember them and say,
“Whatever happened to those guys?”
8What happened is they disappeared
Like last night’s dream, forgotten,
Like a vision of the night. [3]
9Folks who saw them
Won’t see them again.
Those wicked people left their homes,
And they’re not coming back.
10Their children will end sadly.
They’ll beg the poor for help,
After burning through the family wealth.
11The wicked might be young and vigorous,
But they’ll be no less dead in the dust.
A sweet tooth for trouble
12They love the sweet taste of evil,Like candy on the tongue.
13They don’t want to lose its taste.
So they slowly savor it under the tongue.
14But once that stuff gets to the gut
It’s gut-rot poison.
15They gulp wealth down,
Then throw it up.
God gags them
Till they puke their bellies dry.
Tag team of Wicked and Wealthy
16They might as well suck cobra juice.Because wealthy and wicked are a fatal combo.
17Dead, they can’t enjoy a river view,
Or the taste of honey and milk curds. [4]
18Whatever they make, earn, or steal
They’ll lose it all and give it away.
Whatever they profit from in business
They’ll end up counting it as a loss.
19They cheated and degraded the poor.
They confiscated another’s home.
20They were always hungry for more.
And they always took whatever they wanted.
21They devoured everything
From everyone they could,
Until there was nothing left for anyone,
Including the nasty people.
22Once rich, now broke,
It hits them: full-blown panic.
Then everything goes wrong.
23God will fill their hungry, wicked bellies
With heaven’s wrath.
He’ll rain down anger like manna,
Heaven’s food for the wicked.
The wicked run, drop, and die
24They’ll run from the flash of iron weapons.But they can’t escape them all.
A bronze arrow tears deep into them.
25They’ll pull the arrow out of their back.
Then terror will seize them
When they see it cut into the liver. [5]
26Deepest darkness becomes their last supper,
The treasure waiting for them.
A fire ends them
And everyone living with them.
27Heaven testifies against them.
Earth steps up and condemns them, too.
28A flood sweeps away their homes,
A flash flood of God’s wrath.
29That’s how it ends for the wicked.
That’s their inheritance from God.
Footnotes
Naamah’s location is unknown.
Pardon the toilet word, but the writer said it. We could have used a more sanitary word, like “excrement.” But in context, it gut-feels like the best term might have been closer to “s**t” than to “excrement.” Zophar was upset and given what else he said, it seems he would have used a rough metaphor.
Prophets in the Bible sometimes called vivid dreams “visions of the night.” Many people in ancient times—Jews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and others—seemed to believe that dreams were clues to the future. Many taught that God or gods often communicated to people in dreams. For more see the note for Job 4:13.
Curds are similar to cottage cheese, yogurt, or tofu, though all four go through different processes. Curds are made from the kind of lumps that we’ve seen develop when we leave the milk out too long.
The Hebrew word for “liver,” mrora, can also mean gall from the gall bladder, snake venom, and poison.
Discussion Questions
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