Job 20:29

This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God.

Appointed - not as a matter of chance, but by the divine 'decree' (margin) and settled principle (cf. Job 18:21).

Remarks:

(1) When reproached by others, we need the more to take heed to our spirit, that we do not reply in hastiness, but in accordance with the calm dictates of reason (Job 20:2). We do not lose but gain weight by controlling our natural tempers; because the very term 'passion' implies that he who gives way to it is passive, acted on, instead of being capable of acting on others.

(2) The ungodly may seem to triumph for a time, but their triumph is of short-lived duration (Job 20:5). Hypocrisy is a losing game. It affords but a sorry satisfaction for the time that a man should be thought to be that which he knows in his heart he is not; and the mask is soon, and for ever, to be stripped off, and the hypocrite's naked deformity to be exposed before angels, men, and devils. The very height of the sinner's previous elevation only enhances the depth of his ignominious fall at last. All else, except solid piety, is like a vanishing dream. The place of the sinner who is most brilliantly prosperous now shall soon know him no more.

(3) Even in this world God's moral government for the most part causes the transgressor to suffer retribution in kind. "Be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23). Sometimes the children (Job 20:10) of the oppressor have been fain to win the favour of those very poor whom their father had robbed. "The sin of his youth" (Job 20:11) often haunts his conscience with guilty remembrances, destroying all peace, and often leaves seeds of disease in the bodily constitution which remain with him for life. However sweet a man's pleasant sins be to him at the time, and however long he tries to prolong the enjoyment of them (Job 20:12), yet, presently, bitterness and death are the fatal result. Even in the midst of his affluence he is deprived of the enjoyment of it. He knows no inward rest amidst his plenty, and he shall ere long have to disgorge his ill-gotten wealth (Job 20:15; Job 20:18). He feels as though he were in straits amidst abundance (Job 20:22); and is continually fearing that the whole force for those whom he has reduced to misery shall suddenly attack him. His insatiable appetite shall at last receive at God's hands a shower of fiery wrath more than enough to fill him to the full (Job 20:23). God's glittering sword shall pierce him in an instant. Heaven and earth are against him. Where, then, can he flee to? Oh how sweet to the believer to know that he "is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24), and that God's anger is turned away (Isaiah 12:1) forever from him!