Commentary on the Book of Job part thirty six

                                    Job 20:1-29

In this chapter, Zophar launched into a diatribe against wicked and violent men. In his harangue, Zophar did not mention Job. Since Zophar knew that Job was not violent, the purpose of his tirade remains unclear. Perhaps, Zophar thought Job had done violence to the truth.

Zophar's conclusions about that which happens to violent criminals turned out to be only partly true. Zophar believed that even though criminals can be intelligent and talented, their time on earth will be short because good people will usually put an end to them. While Zophar may have been right by saying that sometimes good people put an end to criminals either in battle or by use of the law, quite often good people fail in their battles with criminals. In fact, much of history has been about how tyrants, who are nothing but leaders of criminal gangs, have often taken control of entire communities, and even whole nations, gain power over the law and the police, and commit any cruel terrors against the people that they desire with impunity.

Since the image of God in every person has been infected with the darkness of evil, then Zophar, like many people, began to sense within his inner being that some form of punishment must await the violent person following physical death. Like Zophar did in verse 26, many people, even without reading the Bible, get an intuitive sense, which comes from God, that places of dreadful darkness and fiery hell await the violent person after this life.

The Bible informs us that three such places of punishment in fact exist. Revelation 20:13 reveals that God consigns the dead, who are always unrepentant sinners, to one of three places of punishment called the Sea, Death, and Hell. While God alone retains the sole power of judgment, one could speculate that God consigns good people who never repented to the place of least punishment called the Sea. God consigns the grossly immoral to the place of utter darkness called Death, and the cruel and violent to the fiery Hell.

Preachers are not wrong when they preach to unrepentant sinners that they will go to hell if they do not repent of their sins and trust in Jesus to save them. While Hell is certainly far worse than Death which is far worse than the Sea, nevertheless, all three are hellish places devoid of any love or mercy.