Job 20:18 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Job 20:18
That which he laboured for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down: according to his substance shall the restitution be, and he shall not rejoice therein.
earnings (as the product of toil) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
restore
מֵשִׁ֣יבme.Shiv
H7725
to turn back (hence · verb, hiphil active participle, masculine singular absolute
down
יִבְלָ֑עyiv.La'
H1104
to make away with (specifically by swallowing) · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
substance
כְּחֵ֥ילke.Cheil
H2428
probably a force · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct
restitution
תְּ֝מוּרָת֗וֹte.mu.ra.To
H8545
barter · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
rejoice
יַעֲלֹֽסya.'a.Los
H5965
to leap for joy · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 20:10 His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.
Job 20:15 He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.
Proverbs 1:12 Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit:
Jeremiah 22:13 Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and gi…
Jeremiah 51:44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow to…
Job 20:5 That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment?
Job 31:25 If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much;
Job 31:29 If I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 20:10-22
The instances here given of the miserable condition of the wicked man in this world are expressed with great fulness and fluency of language, and the same thing returned to again and repeated in other words. Let us therefore reduce the particulars to their proper heads, and observe,
I. What his wickedness is for which he is punished.
1. The lusts of the flesh, here called the sins of his youth (Job 20:11); for those are the sins which, at that age, people are most tempted to. The forbidden pleasures of sense are said to be sweet in his mouth (Job 20:12); he indulges himself in all the gratifications of the carnal appetite, and takes an inordinate complacency in them, as yielding the most agr…
Image from food which is taken away from one before he can swallow it.
restitution--(So Pro 6:31). The parallelism favors the English Version rather than the translation of GESENIUS, "As a possession to be restored in which he rejoices not."
he shall not rejoice--His enjoyment of his ill-gotten gains shall then be at an end (Job 20:5).
John Gill on Job 20:18
That which he laboured for shall he restore,.... This explains what was before figuratively expressed by vomiting, Job 20:15; and is to be interpreted either of that which another laboured for; so the Targum paraphrases it,
"another's labour;''
and Mr. Broughton renders it, "he shall restore what man's pain get": and then the sense is, that that which another got by his labour, coming by some means or another into the hand of this rapacious, covetous, wicked man, he shall be obliged to restore to him again; or the hire of the labourer being detained in his hands, he shall be forced to give it to him, as the Egyptians, by lending the Israelites their jewels of gold and silver, restored to t…
17 He shall not delight himself in streams,
Like to rivers and brooks of honey and cream.
18 Giving back that for which he laboured, he shall not swallow it;
He shall not rejoice according to the riches he hath gotten.
19 Because he cast down, let the destitute lie helpless;
He shall not, in case he hath seized a house, finish building it.
20 Because he knew no rest in his craving,
He shall not be able to rescue himself with what he most loveth.
As poets sing of the aurea aetas of the paradise-like primeval age: Flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant,
(Note: Ovid, Metam. i. 112, comp. Virgil, Ecl. iv. 30:
Et durae quercus sudabant roscida mella;
and Horace, Epod. xvi. 47
Mella cava…
The Church Fathers
"In vain did he get tired. By doing so he did not wish to do works of mercy; so it is said that the Lord feeds on butter and honey (1), and these foods are given to him by his humble followers. "They did something hard; Something that can not be chewed or eaten. What does this represent? Iniquity, perhaps, or pride.
Ver. 18. He shall pay for all the things that he hath done, nor yet shall he be consumed. [LITERAL INTERPRETATION] 21. For he 'pays' in torment for those desires, which he retained here contrary to right, and being consigned to avenging flames, he is always dying, in that he is always kept alive in death. For he is never consumed in death, in that if his life in dying were consumed, his punishment likewise would be brought to an end together with his life; but that he may be tormented without end, he is forced to live on without end in punishment, that he whose life here was dead in sin, may have his death there living in punishment. Let him say then; He shall pay for all the things that he hath done, nor yet shall he be consumed, forasmuch as he is tormented, and not put out, he dies and lives, he is falling away and holding on, always finishing, without being finished. These things are very terrible in the healing of the ear only, how infinitely more terrible in the enduring of them! Now because the multiplicity of his wickedness demands that he should never be without punishment, it is fitly added; According to the multitude of his inventions shall he also suffer. 22. For whereas he found out many things in order to sin, he is tormented with new inventions in punishment. Since what he could not have suspected here, he is made sensible of there, when he is given over to vengeance. For as the Elect in exercising themselves in good works, sometimes set themselves to do more than the Lord thought fit to bid them, (for virginity of the flesh is no where commanded, but only commended; since if it were commanded, then it would follow that wedlock must henceforth be deemed sin, and yet there are many strong in the virtue of virginity, so as to render more in service than they received in command,) so very commonly the wicked are each practised in bad ways, so that they find out in evil doing more for them to do than by the practice of the lost they received examples of wickedness. And hence they are stricken with the torments of an ampler retribution, in that they too of their own heads invented practices on an ampler scale, which they deserve to be stricken for. And so it is well said, According to the multitude of his inventions shall he also suffer. For he would not find out new wickedness, except he also sought it; and he would not seek it, except he was…
Dictionary and topics
Afflictions Of The Wicked, The · Are multiplied — Are multiplied
Creditor · OPPRESSIONS OF — OPPRESSIONS OF
Debtor · UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO — UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO
Hypocrisy · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Restitution · To be ma — To be ma
Worldliness · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The streams of olive oil and rivers of milk and honey signify superabundant blessing (Exod 5:19; Deut 27:3; Joel 3:18).
Rashi on Job 20:18
He will return that which he labored for The loot that he stole.
when his gain becomes vast wealth When his gain becomes vast wealth, then he will lose it.
he will not rejoice Heb. יעלס, with it. Similarly, יַעֲלֹז, and so יַעַלֹץ ; the three of them are interchangeable.
