Job 21:7
Why then do the wicked live, are they advanced, and strengthened with riches?
Open Job 21:7 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quare ergo impii vivunt, sublevati sunt, confortatique divitiis ?
- Septuagint (Swete)
- διὰ τί ἀσεβεῖς ζῶσιν, πεπαλαίωνται δὲ καὶ ἐν πλούτῳ;
- Hebrew (WLC)
- מַדּ֣וּעַ רְשָׁעִ֣ים יִחְי֑וּ עָ֝תְק֗וּ גַּם גָּ֥בְרוּ חָֽיִל
Haydock's commentary
Riches. This is what fills me with great anxiety. Yet it quite destroys the force of your argument, (Calmet) since you pretend that the prosperity of the wicked is never of long duration. We see them, however, live to an advanced old age, (Haydock) continually offending God, and annoying their neighbours. (Calmet)
Septuagint, "yea, they grow old in riches."
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 XII. To prevent any one from being checked in the exercise of mercy, he shows that God cares for human actions; and proves on the evidence of Job that all wicked men are unhappy in the very abundance of their wealth
41. That is no small point. For those three royal friends of Job declared him to be a sinner, because they saw that he, after being rich, became poor; that after having many children, he had lost them all, and that he was now covered with sores and was full of weals, and was a mass of wounds from head to foot. But holy Job made this declaration to them: “If I suffer thus because of my sins, why do the wicked live? They grow old also in riches, their seed is according to their pleasure, their children are before their eyes, their houses are prosperous; but they have no fear; there is no scourge from the Lord on them.”