Job 21:32
He shall be brought to the graves, and shall watch in the heap of the dead.
Open Job 21:32 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Ipse ad sepulchra ducetur, et in congerie mortuorum vigilabit.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ αὐτὸς εἰς τάφους ἀπηνέχθη, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ σωρῶν ἠγρύπνησεν.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְ֭הוּא לִקְבָר֣וֹת יוּבָ֑ל וְֽעַל גָּדִ֥ישׁ יִשְׁקֽוֹד
Haydock's commentary
Dead. Hebrew, "the sheaves," being quite ripe for harvest, and even in the tomb, the tyrant retains some sore of pre-eminence, as he is buried with honour, an set like a more elevated sheaf, to inspect the rest. (Calmet)
Godiss, is rendered by Protestants, "tomb," (margin) "heap." But (chap. v. 26.) where only the word occurs again, we find "a shock of corn," and this comparison seems very suitable here. The damned shall watch, alas, when it will be to no purpose, among the heap of fellow-sufferers, who would not think while they had time to repent. After millions of night spent thus without sleep or ease, we may imagine we hear their mournful lamentations from the depth of the abyss. Always misery! and never any hope of ease! (Haydock)
"Eternity," says Bridayne, (ser. in Maury's Eloq.) "is a pendulum, the vibration of which sounds continually, Always! Never! In the mean while, a reprobate cries out: What o'clock is it? And the same voice answers, Eternity!" Thus at last the wicked shal awake from the sleep in which they have spent their days; (Haydock) and their watching, restless, and immortal souls (St. Thomas Aquinas) will bitterly lament their past folly. What profit will they derive from the honours paid to their corpse by surviving friends, (Haydock) even though they be embalmed, and seem to live in marble statues? (Pineda)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Ambrose On the Duties of the Clergy, Chapter XVI. To confirm what has been said above about rewards and punishments, he adds that it is not strange if there is no reward reserved for some in the future; for they do not labour here nor struggle. He goes on to say also that for this reason temporal goods are granted to these persons, so that they may have no excuse whatever
61. They, then, who have devoted themselves to pleasures, luxury, robbery, gain, or honours are spectators rather than combatants. They have the profit of labour, but not the fruits of virtue. They love their ease; by cunning and wickedness they heap up riches; but they will pay the penalty of their iniquity, though it be late. Their rest will be in hell, thine in heaven; their home in the grave, thine in paradise. Whence Job said beautifully that they watch in the tomb, for they cannot have the calm of quiet rest which he enjoys who shall rise again.