You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’ Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
Job had largely described the prosperity of wicked people; now, in these verses, I. He opposes this to what his friends had maintained concerning their certain ruin in this life. "Tell me how often do you see the candle of the wicked put out? Do you not as often see it burnt down to the socket, until it goes out of itself? Job 21:17.
Commenting on Job 21:17-26
His eyes shall see his destruction,.... Or "should see his destruction" (b); calamities coming upon himself and upon his children; or otherwise it will not affect him: but when a man has a personal experience of affliction as punishments of his sin, or with his own eyes sees his children in distressed circumstances on his account, this must sensibly affect him, and be a sore...
Equally questionable is the friends' assertion that if the godless himself is not punished, the children are (Job 18:19; Job 20:10); and that God rewardeth him here for his iniquity, and that he shall know it to his cost. So "know" (Hos 9:7).