the sky (as aloft · noun, common masculine plural absolute
reveal
יְגַלּ֣וּye.ga.Lu
H1540
to denude (especially in a disgraceful sense) · verb, piel imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
iniquity
עֲוֹנ֑וֹa.vo.No
H5771
perversity · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
earth
וְ֝אֶ֗רֶץve.'E.retz
H776
the earth (at large · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
up
מִתְקוֹמָ֘מָ֥הmit.ko.Ma.Mah
H6965
to rise (in various applications · verb, hithpael active participle, feminine singular absolute
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 16:18 O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place.
Isaiah 26:21 For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her b…
Luke 12:2-3 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.
Deuteronomy 31:28 Gather unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to re…
Job 18:18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.
Psalms 44:20-21 If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god;
Jeremiah 29:23 Because they have committed villany in Israel, and have committed adultery with their neighbours’ wives, and have spoken lying words in my n…
Malachi 3:5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Job 20:23–end
Zophar, having described the many embarrassments and vexations which commonly attend the wicked practices of oppressors and cruel men, here comes to show their utter ruin at last.
I. Their ruin will take its rise from God's wrath and vengeance, Job 20:23. The hand of the wicked was upon him (Job 20:22), every hand of the wicked. His hand was against every one, and therefore every man's hand will be against him. Yet, in grappling with these, he might go near to make his part good; but his heart cannot endure, nor his hands be strong, when God shall deal with him (Eze 22:14), when God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him and rain it upon him. Every word here speaks terror. It is not only…
All creation is at enmity with him, and proclaims his guilt, which he would fain conceal.
John Gill on Job 20:27
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity,.... Either God the Maker and Possessor of heaven, who dwells there, and is sometimes so called, Daniel 4:25; who sees and knows all things, even those that are most secret, as well as more openly committed, and will make all manifest, sooner or later; or else the angels of heaven, the inhabitants of it, so the Targum; who in the last day will be employed in gathering out of Christ's kingdom all that offend, and do iniquity, Matthew 13:41; or the judgments of God descending from heaven, or appear there, and are owing to it; such as drowning the old world by opening the windows of heaven, Genesis 7:11; the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimston…
26 All darkness is reserved for his treasured things,
A fire that is not blown upon devoureth him;
It feedeth upon what is left in his tent.
27 The heavens reveal his iniquity,
And the earth riseth up against him.
28 The produce of his house must vanish,
Flowing away in the day of God's wrath.
. . . . . .
29 This is the lot of the wicked man from Elohim,
And the heritage decreed for him from God.
As in Psa 17:14 God's store of earthly goods for the children of men is called צפוּן (צפין), so here the stores laid up by man himself are called צפוּניו. Total darkness, which will finally destroy them, is decreed by God against these stores of the godless, which are brought together not as coming…
The Church Fathers
"And let the heaven discover its iniquities; The judgment that comes from heaven.
Ver. 27. The heavens shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him. 37. What do we understand by 'the heavens,' but the righteous, and what by 'the earth,' but sinners? And hence in the Lord's prayer we pray; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven, meaning this, that the will of our Creator, in the same way as it is accomplished in all the righteous, may also be fulfilled in all sinners as well. Moreover of the righteous it is said, The heavens declare the glory of God [Ps. 19, 1]. And to man when he sinned the sentence is pronounced, Earth thou art, and unto earth thou shalt return. And so of this ungodly man, when dragged to that awful judgment; 'the heavens reveal his iniquity, and the earth rises up against him,' that that man, who here never spared either the good or the bad, should in that tremendous inquest have the life of the righteous and of sinners alike accusing him. And of the two indeed it is worse if a man injure the good rather than sinners; and hence it is said by the Prophet, For her blood is in the midst of her: she poured it upon the smoothest rock; she poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust: [Ez. 24, 7] by 'the ground' and 'the dust' indeed denoting sinners, but by the 'very smooth rock,' the righteous man, who is not made rough by the hard grazes of sins; and so 'the blood is poured upon the very smooth rock,' when the wickedness of a bloodthirsty mind rages in the afflicting of the righteous soul. While then it is worse unjustly to distress the righteous than the unrighteous, yet it is much worse to hurt the righteous and unrighteous together; and therefore whereas the wicked have injured both the good and the bad alike, in the accusing to damnation, 'the heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him, because he at one and the same time set himself against those who savoured the things of heaven, and oppressed those who savoured of things below. But it may be that by 'the earth' we have denoted not the sinful and reprobate, but those that being busied in earthly courses, by the help of alms and of tears attain to eternal life. Concerning whom it is said by the Psalmist, when the Lord is proclaimed as coming to Judgment, He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth that He may Judge His people. [Ps. 50. 4] For He 'calls the heavens from above,' when…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
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).
