TRV
Translation
King James Version
All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
Complete Jewish Bible
"Total darkness is laid up for his treasures, a fire fanned by no one will consume him, and calamity awaits what is left in his tent.
Berean Standard Bible
Total darkness is reserved for his treasures. A fire unfanned will consume him and devour what is left in his tent.
American Standard Version
All darkness is laid up for his treasures: A fire not blown by man shall devour him; It shall consume that which is left in his tent.
World English Bible Messianic
All darkness is laid up for his treasures. An unfanned fire shall devour him. It shall consume that which is left in his tent.
Geneva Bible (1599)
All darkenes shalbe hid in his secret places: the fire that is not blowen, shall deuoure him, and that which remaineth in his tabernacle, shalbe destroyed.
Young's Literal Translation
All darkness is hid for his treasures, Consume him doth a fire not blown, Broken is the remnant in his tent.
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In the KJVVerse 13,353 of 31,102
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Commentary on Job 20 verses 23–29
23 ¶ When he is about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.
24 He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.
25 It is drawn, and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering sword cometh out of his gall: terrors are upon him.
26 All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle.
27 The heaven shall reveal his iniquity; and the earth shall rise up against him.
28 The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath.
29 This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God.
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 the justice of God that is engaged against him, but his wrath, the deep resentment of provocations given to himself; it is the fury of his wrath, incensed to the highest degree; it is cast upon him with force and fierceness; it is rained upon him in abundance; it comes on his head like the fire and brimstone upon Sodom, to which the psalmist also refers, Psa 11:6. On the wicked God shall rain fire and brimstone. There is no fence against this, but in Christ, who is the only covert from the storm and tempest, Isa 32:2. This wrath shall be cast upon him when he is about to fill his belly, just going to glut himself with what he has gotten and promising himself abundant satisfaction in it. Then, when he is eating, shall this tempest surprise him, when he is secure and easy, and in apprehension of no danger; as the ruin of the old world and Sodom came when they were in the depth of their security and the height of their sensuality, as Christ observes, Luk 17:26, etc. Perhaps Zophar here reflects on the death of Job's children when they were eating and drinking.
II. Their ruin will be inevitable, and there will be no possibility of escaping it (Job 20:24): He shall flee from the iron weapon. Flight argues guilt. He will not humble himself under the judgments of God, nor seek means to make his peace with him. All his care is to escape the vengeance that pursues him, but in vain: if he escape the sword, yet the bow of steel shall strike him through. God has weapons of all sorts; he has both whet his sword and bent his bow (Psa 7:12, Psa 7:13); he can deal with his enemies cominus vel eminus - at hand or afar off. He has a sword for those that think to fight it out with him by their strength, and a bow for those that think to avoid him by their craft. See Isa 24:17, Isa 24:18; Jer 48:43, Jer 48:44. He that is marked for ruin, though he may escape one judgment, will find another ready for him.
III. It will be a total terrible ruin. When the dart that has struck him through (for when God shoots he is sure to hit his mark, when he strikes he strikes home) comes to be drawn out of his body, when the glittering sword (the lightning, so the word is), the flaming sword, the sword that is bathed in heaven (Isa 34:5), comes out of his gall, O what terrors are upon him! How strong are the convulsions, how violent are the dying agonies! How terrible are the arrests of death to a wicked man!
IV. Sometimes it is a ruin that comes upon him insensibly, Job 20:26. 1. The darkness he is wrapped up in is a hidden darkness: it is all darkness, utter darkness, without the least mixture of light, and it is hid in his secret place, whither he has retreated and where he hopes to shelter himself; he never retires into his own conscience but he finds himself in the dark and utterly at a loss. 2. The fire he is consumed by is a fire not blown, kindled without noise, a consumption which every body sees the effect of, but nobody sees the cause of. It is plain that the gourd is withered, but the worm at the root, that causes it to wither, is out of sight. He is wasted by a soft gentle fire - surely, but very slowly. When the fuel is very combustible, the fire needs no blowing, and that is his case; he is ripe for ruin. The proud, and those that do wickedly, shall be stubble, Mal 4:1. An unquenchable fire shall consume him (so some read it), and that is certainly true of hell-fire.
V. It is a ruin, not only to himself, but to his family: It shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle, for the curse shall reach him, and he shall be cut off perhaps by the same grievous disease. There is an entail of wrath upon the family, which will destroy both his heirs and his inheritance, Job 20:28. 1. His posterity will be rooted out: The increase of his house shall depart, shall either be cut off by untimely deaths or forced to run their country. Numerous and growing families, if wicked and vile, are soon reduced, dispersed, and extirpated, by the judgments of God. 2. His estate will be sunk. His goods shall flow away from his family as fast as ever they flowed into it, when the day of God's wrath comes, for which, all the while his estate was in the getting by fraud and oppression, he was treasuring up wrath.
VI. It is a ruin which will manifestly appear to be just and righteous, and what he has brought upon himself by his own wickedness; for (Job 20:27) the heaven shall reveal his iniquity, that is, the God of heaven, who sees all the secret wickedness of the wicked, will, by some means or other, let all the world know what a base man he has been, that they may own the justice of God in all that is brought upon him. The earth also shall rise up against him, both to discover his wickedness and to avenge it. The earth shall disclose her blood, Isa 26:21. The earth will rise up against him (as the stomach rises against that which is loathsome), and will no longer keep him. The heaven reveals his iniquity, and therefore will not receive him. Whither then must he go but to hell? If the God of heaven and earth be his enemy, neither heaven nor earth will show him any kindness, but all the hosts of both are and will be at war with him.
VII. Zophar concludes like an orator (Job 20:29): This is the portion of a wicked man from God; it is allotted him, it is designed him, as his portion. He will have it at last, as a child has his portion, and he will have it for a perpetuity; it is what he must abide by: This is the heritage of his decree from God; it is the settled rule of his judgment, and fair warning is given of it. O wicked man! thou shalt surely die, Eze 33:8. Though impenitent sinners do not always fall under such temporal judgments as are here described (therein Zophar was mistaken), yet the wrath of God abides upon them, and they are made miserable by spiritual judgments, which are much worse, their consciences being either, on the one hand, a terror to them, and then they are in continual amazement, or, on the other hand, seared and silenced, and then they are given up to a reprobate sense and bound over to eternal ruin. Never was any doctrine better explained, or worse applied, than this by Zophar, who intended by all this to prove Job a hypocrite. Let us receive the good explication, and make a better application, for warning to ourselves to stand in awe and not to sin.
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 23–29. Public domain.
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Gregory the DialogistAD 604
MORALS ON THE BOOK OF JOB 15.37
What do we understand by “the heavens,” but the righteous, and what by “the earth,” but sinners? Hence, in the Lord’s Prayer we pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This means that the will of our Creator, in the same way as it is accomplished in all the righteous, may be fulfilled in all sinners as well. Moreover, of the righteous it is said, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” To man, when he sinned, the sentence is pronounced, “You are earth, and to earth you shall 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 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.
Gregory the DialogistAD 604
34. For though the hypocrite exhibits good actions on the surface, yet a certain ‘darkness’ of evil deeds appears in him; yet it less comes forth in act, than lies buried in his secret thought. For he who does not fulfil all things at once in execution, does in his heart in silence hold all things that may do mischief. Thus ‘all darkness’ is said to be ‘hid in his secret places,’ in that though he does not exhibit to view all things evil in himself, yet he aims to bring down all upon his fellow-creatures. Now let him add the retribution, which this soul so reprobate shall be visited with. It goes on;
A fire that is not kindled shall consume him.
35. Most wonderfully in these few words is the fire of hell set forth! For bodily fire, in order to become fire, stands in need of bodily fuel; and when it is necessary for it to be preserved, as we well know, it is nourished by wood heaped upon it, neither can it be, except by being kindled, nor live, save by being cherished. But contrarily the fire of hell, whilst it is a bodily fire, and bodily consumes the children of perdition that are cast into it, is neither kindled by human effort, nor kept alive by wood, but being once made to be, it lasts unextinguishable: at one and the same time it needs no kindling, and lacks not heat. And so it is well said of this wicked one; A fire not kindled shall consume him; in that the justice of the Almighty, foreseeing future events, did from the very beginning of the world create the fire of hell, which should once begin in the punishment of the wicked, but never end its heat even without fuel. But it is necessary to know, that all the children of perdition, as they sinned in Spirit and flesh conjointly, are there tormented in spirit and flesh alike. Hence it is said by the Psalmist, Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of Thine anger. [Ps. 21, 9] The Lord shall confound them in His wrath, and the fire shall devour them. For an ‘oven’ is heated within; but he who is ‘devoured by fire’ begins to be consumed from the outside. Thus that holy Scripture might show that the lost burn both within and without, it testifies that they are at once ‘devoured by fire,’ and ‘made as a fiery oven,’ that by fire they should be tormented in the body, and by grief burn in spirit. Hence in this place too, when it is declared of the ungodly man that a fire that is not kindled shall consume him, it is forthwith added concerning his spirit;
Being left in his tabernacle, it shall go ill with him.
36. The ‘tabernacle’ of the wicked man is his flesh, in that he inhabits it in joyfulness, and, if it were possible, wishes he might never quit it. But the righteous, as they place their delight in the prospect of heavenly rewards, and have their conversation in heaven, while they are still in the flesh are as if they were no longer in the flesh, in that they are not fed with any gratification of the flesh. And hence it is said to some persons; But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit [Rom. 8, 9]: not that they were not in the flesh, who by the epistles of their master received charges of exhortation; but it is in a manner to be no longer ‘in the flesh,’ not to own aught connected with the love of fleshly objects. But on the other hand this wicked man, because he set all his delight in a fleshly life, ‘dwelt in the tabernacle’ of the flesh. Which very flesh when he shall receive back in the resurrection, he shall burn along with it delivered over to the fires of hell. Then be longs to be brought out of it; then he seeks, if he might be able, to escape from his torments; then be begins to wish he could get quit of that which he loved: but because he preferred that flesh to God, it is brought to pass by the judgment of God, that by it he is more fully tormented in the fire. Here then he has no mind to leave it, and yet is severed from it, and there he wishes to leave it and yet is kept in it for punishments. And so for the increase of his torments, he is at once both removed out of the body here against his will, and held fast in the body there when he would not. Therefore because his spirit in torment longs [So A.B.C.D.—Ben. ‘shall long.’ lewpetrian Sept.] to get rid of the flesh, which it set before itself in loving amiss, and has not the power, it is lightly said here, being left in his tabernacle it shall go ill with him.
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Job 20:26, delivered by Zophar the Naamathite, presents a stark and uncompromising vision of the comprehensive judgment awaiting the wicked. It asserts that even the most concealed aspects of an unrighteous person's life will be exposed and utterly consumed by a divinely initiated, irresistible fire. This catastrophic downfall extends to their entire household and legacy, leading to complete ruin. Zophar employs this vivid imagery to reinforce his rigid retributive theology, aiming to convince Job that his suffering is an inevitable consequence of hidden sin, thereby advocating for an immediate and absolute divine justice.
CONTEXT
Literary Context: Job 20:26 is embedded within Zophar's second and final discourse, found in Job 20. This chapter represents the climax of Zophar's argument, which is characterized by its dogmatism and unwavering adherence to traditional wisdom. His speech directly follows Job's profound lament in Job 19, where Job expresses his deep anguish, his sense of abandonment by God and man, and his unwavering conviction of his own innocence. Zophar, like his companions Eliphaz and Bildad, operates under the assumption that all suffering is a direct consequence of sin. He meticulously details the fleeting nature of the wicked's prosperity and their inevitable, catastrophic downfall, using a rapid succession of vivid images of destruction. This particular verse serves as a powerful summation, emphasizing the totality and supernatural origin of the judgment that awaits the unrighteous, thereby pressing Job to confess presumed hidden transgressions.
Historical & Cultural Context: The book of Job is set in the patriarchal era, reflecting the ancient Near Eastern worldview concerning divine justice, human prosperity, and calamity. In this cultural framework, there was a strong, often simplistic, correlation between one's moral conduct and their material well-being: righteousness was believed to bring blessings, while wickedness was thought to invite curses. The concept of "secret places" (Hebrew: mistarim) would have resonated deeply, referring not only to hidden physical locations but also to concealed wealth, security, or even unconfessed sins that one believed were safe from discovery. The "tabernacle" (Hebrew: 'ohel) denotes a tent or dwelling, symbolizing one's entire household, family, possessions, and legacy. Its destruction signified a complete obliteration of a person's life and everything associated with them, a fate considered the ultimate disgrace and punishment in ancient societies, often attributed to direct divine judgment, as seen in historical accounts of cities or families being utterly wiped out.
Key Themes: Job 20:26 powerfully contributes to several overarching themes within the book of Job and broader biblical theology. The most prominent theme is the Divine Judgment on the Wicked, asserting God's absolute justice and the certainty of retribution against unrighteousness. Zophar's argument, though misapplied to Job, underscores the biblical truth that God is not mocked and that hidden sins will ultimately be exposed, as articulated in Numbers 32:23. Another key theme is Sudden and Inescapable Destruction, conveyed by the "fire not blown," which signifies a supernatural, irresistible judgment originating directly from God, highlighting the futility of human attempts to evade divine wrath. This echoes the suddenness of divine intervention seen in passages like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:24. Finally, the verse emphasizes Comprehensive Ruin, illustrating that divine judgment extends beyond the individual to their "secret places" and "tabernacle," signifying a total collapse of their life, security, and legacy, reinforcing the idea that the consequences of wickedness are far-reaching and devastating, as described in Psalm 73.
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Job 20:26 masterfully employs several potent literary devices to convey its message of divine judgment and the wicked's inescapable doom. Imagery is central, with the vivid depiction of "darkness," "secret places," and "fire not blown" painting a grim picture of inescapable ruin. The "fire not blown" functions as a powerful Metaphor for direct, supernatural judgment from God, distinguishing it from any humanly-caused or natural disaster. This specific phrase also embodies Paradox, as fire typically requires blowing to be kindled, yet here it is unblown, emphasizing its miraculous and divine origin. Furthermore, the verse utilizes Hyperbole to emphasize the totality and severity of the judgment; the idea that "all darkness" is hidden in one's secret places and that even those "left in his tabernacle" will suffer ill conveys an extreme and comprehensive ruin that underscores Zophar's absolute conviction in the wicked's fate. The phrase "darkness shall be hid in his secret places" also contains a subtle Irony, as darkness is typically associated with concealment, yet here it is "hid" within a place of concealment, suggesting that the very things meant to be hidden will become the agents of destruction or exposure.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
While Zophar's application of this truth to Job was fundamentally flawed—Job's suffering was not a direct consequence of hidden sin—the underlying theological principle of God's ultimate justice and the certainty of judgment for the unrepentant wicked remains a consistent theme throughout Scripture. This verse serves as a stark reminder that no sin or evil can ultimately remain hidden from God's omniscient gaze, and that divine retribution, though often delayed from a human perspective, is assured. It speaks to the futility of seeking security in ill-gotten gains or concealed wickedness, as God's judgment will penetrate every hidden corner and consume every false refuge. The temporary prosperity of the wicked is a recurring biblical motif, always contrasted with their inevitable and devastating end, affirming that God's moral order will ultimately be vindicated.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Job 20:26, despite its origin in Zophar's flawed theology, offers profound spiritual insights for believers today. It reminds us that while God's justice may not always manifest immediately in our temporal experience, it is ultimately certain and comprehensive. This should instill a healthy reverence for God and a commitment to genuine repentance and integrity, knowing that nothing is truly hidden from Him. It challenges us to examine our own "secret places"—the hidden motives, unconfessed sins, or areas of our lives we keep from God's scrutiny. True security and lasting prosperity are not found in material wealth or clever concealment, but in walking uprightly before the Lord. Ultimately, this verse calls us to trust in God's perfect timing and His sovereign plan, even when the wicked seem to flourish, knowing that His justice will prevail and every hidden thing will be brought to light. It encourages us to live transparently, seeking God's cleansing for every dark corner of our lives, rather than attempting to hide from His all-seeing eye.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Does Job 20:26 mean that all suffering is a direct result of hidden sin, as Zophar suggests?
Answer: No, the book of Job as a whole, and particularly God's speeches at the end, ultimately refutes this simplistic view. While the Old Testament often connects sin with suffering and righteousness with blessing (a principle known as retributive justice), Job's experience profoundly challenges the idea that this is always a direct, one-to-one correlation. Zophar and Job's other friends operate under this rigid framework, leading them to falsely accuse Job. The book's larger message, especially in Job 38-41, reveals that God's ways are far more complex and sovereign than human wisdom can comprehend. Suffering can have many purposes beyond direct punishment for sin, including testing faith, refining character, or revealing God's glory. So, while hidden sin can lead to judgment, Job 20:26 should not be used to conclude that all suffering is a punitive consequence of specific, hidden transgressions.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Job 20:26, with its grim portrayal of the wicked's inescapable judgment, finds its ultimate fulfillment and transformation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. While the verse speaks of a "fire not blown" consuming the unrighteous, Christ is revealed as the one who either bears that consuming fire for His people or who will wield it in final judgment. For those who believe, the judgment described by Zophar was fully borne by Christ on the cross, as He became sin for us and endured the wrath of God, the ultimate "fire not blown," so that believers might be spared (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, removing the "darkness" of our hidden sins and offering cleansing and forgiveness. Conversely, for those who reject Him, Christ will be the righteous judge before whom "all darkness" will be exposed (John 3:19-20). The "fire not blown" that consumes the wicked in Job 20:26 foreshadows the final, divine judgment described in the New Testament, where Christ, as the Son of Man, will separate the righteous from the unrighteous, consigning the latter to an eternal, consuming fire (Matthew 25:41). Thus, Christ is both the one who delivers from this judgment and the one who perfectly executes it, bringing about the ultimate triumph of God's justice and establishing His eternal kingdom.