Job 21:34

How then comfort ye me in vain, seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood?

Falsehood - literally, wickedness. Your boasted "consolations" (Job 15:11) are contradicted by facts ("vain"); they therefore only betray your evil intent ("wickedness") against me.

Remarks:

(1) It has often been a subject of distressing perplexity to the godly to observe the seemingly continuous prosperity of many of the ungodly. Striking judgments ere sometimes inflicted on grievous sinners, as samples of God being still the righteous Governor of the world. The difficulty is, Why is it not always so? The answer is, This is a world of probation, in which God, in wonderful long-suffering and patience, gives a season for repentance to the vilest; and at the same time the prosperity of wicked fools, while serving God's counsels, ripens them, when they have continued to harden their heart against His goodness, for their own destruction (Proverbs 1:32).

(2) The language of the natural heart to God is, "Depart from us" (Job 21:14): as, on the contrary, the earnest prayer of every believer is, "Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it" (Psalms 69:18). The unconverted cannot see any "profit" to be gained by praying to and serving the Almighty, while they are most keen-sighted as to worldly profits and gains, from whatsoever source derived. Self-destroyers, and blind to their true interest, they forget, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Or, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:26.)

(3) It is presumption and vanity for us to think we can give an account of, or fathom, all the mysteries of God's dealings. Why one dies in tranquility, another in bitterness of soul-the former, perhaps, the worst man of the two-we cannot say, but simply believe that the Judge of all the earth does right, and exclaim, "Oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33.) To charge great sufferers with great and extraordinary sins is contrary alike to experience and charity.

(4) The truth, which should dispel every perplexing thought about the seeming anomalies of the present disordered state of things, is, there is a judgment (Job 21:30) soon coming, in which all things shall be put to rights-the ungodly shall be eternally punished, their very prosperity previously increasing the weight of their condemnation; and the righteous shall be everlastingly rewarded, their previous sufferings enhancing their inconceivable blessedness. Though now the death of the godly and of the ungodly, in a physical point of view, is alike (Job 21:32), there shall then be an eternal difference between their relative stated. In religious point of view, as death left them, so shall the judgment find them.

`Hope humbly then, with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.'