What is the meaning of Job 21:18? Are they like straw before the wind “Are they like straw before the wind…” (Job 21:18a) • Straw is the dry, hollow stalk left after the grain is removed—light, rootless, easily scattered. Psalm 83:13 parallels the picture: “Make them like tumbleweed, my God, like chaff before the wind.” • Job’s friends have insisted that the wicked are always blown away quickly, but Job challenges that claim (see Job 21:7–17). He is asking, “Is this really how often judgment falls?” • The wind symbolizes God’s sovereign power to upend human pride (Isaiah 17:13). When the Lord chooses, the wicked cannot stand, yet the timing belongs to Him alone. • Takeaway: outward prosperity can mask a fragile spiritual condition; without roots in righteousness, lives become as insubstantial as straw when God’s breath moves. Like chaff swept away by a storm “…like chaff swept away by a storm?” (Job 21:18b) • Chaff—the husks removed in threshing—has no nutritional value and is discarded. Psalm 1:4 echoes the imagery: “Not so the wicked! For they are like chaff driven off by the wind.” • A storm intensifies the action; Hosea 13:3 says the unrepentant “will be like chaff on the threshing floor, like smoke from a window.” Judgment may seem delayed, but when it comes, it is sudden and irresistible (Matthew 3:12). • Job implies that while this fate is certain in the long run, it is not as immediate or predictable as his friends claim. The righteous can trust God’s eventual justice even when they cannot trace it in the moment. • Takeaway: God’s storm will separate the worthless from the valuable. Wisdom is found in aligning with Him before that day arrives. summary Job 21:18 employs two farming images—straw carried by a breeze and chaff driven by a storm—to depict the ultimate end of the wicked. Job uses them rhetorically to rebut his friends’ simplistic formula that judgment always comes swiftly. Scripture affirms that God will indeed blow away all evil in His appointed time; meanwhile, apparent security apart from Him is only temporary and weightless. |
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