Job 27:13–20

Job 27:13 — "This is the portion of a wicked man with God" The word ḥēleq ("portion") is a juridical and covenantal term in Hebrew wisdom literature. It denotes one's allotted share — not merely what one earns, but what is assigned by a sovereign authority. By invoking God (ʾEl) explicitly, Job anchors retribution not in impersonal fate or human karma but in the deliberate governance of the Creator. The verse functions as a formal thesis statement — a legal preamble — for everything that follows. Notably, the Septuagint renders this with meris, used elsewhere for Israel's "portion" in the Lord (Ps 16:5), sharpening the contrast: where the righteous find their ḥēleq in God himself, the wicked find their portion from God only in destruction.

Job 27:14 — "If his children are multiplied, it is for the sword" In ancient Near Eastern culture, numerous offspring were the supreme sign of divine blessing (cf. Ps 127:3–5). Job's inversion is devastating: the wicked man's very abundance of children becomes evidence of impending catastrophe. The sword (ḥereb) evokes military defeat, violent death, and divine judgment simultaneously. The phrase "multiplied for the sword" echoes a bitter irony throughout biblical prophecy — abundance without righteousness is abundance for loss.

Job 27:15 — "Those who remain of him will be buried in death" The Hebrew šəʾērît ("remnant") typically carries salvific connotations — the faithful remnant who survive judgment. Here, Job inverts the term: even those who escape the sword meet death in anonymity, without mourning. To be "buried in death" without lamentation was, in Israelite culture, a profound shame — tantamount to the treatment of animals (cf. Jer 22:19). The "widows" who do not weep underlines the complete dissolution of social bonds that attended genuine human dignity.

Job 27:16 — "Though he heap up silver as the dust" The simile kāʿāpār ("as the dust/dirt") is deliberately degrading. Silver was the primary medium of wealth and exchange; to accumulate it "as dirt" suggests both extraordinary abundance and, ironically, worthlessness in the moral economy. The heaping itself is condemned — not wealth per se, but obsessive accumulation unchecked by justice or generosity. Patristic readers consistently connected this verse to the sin of pleonexia (covetousness), which St. Paul calls idolatry (Col 3:5).

Job 27:17 — "He may prepare it, but the just will put it on" This verse introduces one of the most theologically rich reversals in Job. The wicked man's hoarded goods — his clothing, his silver — will be worn by the ṣaddîq, the righteous man. The image of "putting on" garments carries deep biblical resonance: clothing signifies identity, dignity, and covenant status. The righteous man who "puts on" the wealth of the wicked is a figure of vindication, reminiscent of the Exodus pattern where Israel "plundered" Egypt (Ex 12:36) — the wealth of oppressors transferred to the servants of God.

Job 27:18 — "He builds his house as the moth" The moth's cocoon (ʿāš) is a masterpiece of brevity and fragility — elaborately constructed, quickly destroyed. The image condenses the vanity of human striving without God. Some manuscripts and traditions add the parallel "like a booth that a watchman makes" (sukkâ), a temporary shelter erected for a season and then abandoned. Both images point to the impermanence of any human structure — whether literal dwelling or social legacy — built without the foundation of righteousness.

Job 27:19 — "He lies down rich, but he will not do so again" The Hebrew is terse and brutal: the rich man lies down (yiškāb) — perhaps in the contentment of accumulated wealth — but is "gathered no more" (lōʾ yēʾāsēp). The verb ʾāsap is used both for gathering possessions and for gathering a person into death or community. Its negation signals total dissolution: he will not rise, will not be gathered, will not be remembered. The single night of sleep becomes an image of a life that crosses into death without warning or preparation.

Job 27:20 — "Terrors overtake him like waters" Ballāhôt ("terrors") is one of the most charged words in the Hebrew wisdom vocabulary, used elsewhere in Job (18:11, 24:17) to describe the existential dread that accompanies wicked living and final judgment. The simile "like waters" recalls the primordial chaos (tôhû) over which God broods in Genesis 1:2 — uncontrolled, overwhelming, destructive. The storm at night intensifies this: darkness removes all the wicked man's constructed defenses, and he faces judgment stripped of every resource. For patristic interpreters, this verse anticipates the final judgment, when no earthly accumulation or human relationship can shield the soul from divine truth.

Typological and Spiritual Senses In the sensus plenior, the wicked man of Job 27 is a type of every soul that chooses the creature over the Creator. The "portion" assigned by God to the wicked points forward to the Gospel's eschatological reversal (Lk 16:19–31; Mt 25:31–46). The righteous man who inherits the wealth of the wicked (v. 17) finds its fullest realization in Christ, who inherits all things (Heb 1:2) and clothes the redeemed in his own righteousness (Rev 19:8). The moth-house of verse 18 is taken up by Jesus himself in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 6:19–20), making this Joban image part of the living Tradition of Christian teaching on detachment.

Catholic tradition reads this passage through multiple lenses that together produce a richer theology than the surface "retribution doctrine" might suggest.

On Divine Justice and Retributive Providence: The Catechism teaches that "God's justice is perfect" (CCC 1950) and that his moral law is inscribed in creation itself — the collapse of the wicked man's house is not arbitrary but reflects the structural order of a universe governed by Logos. St. Augustine (City of God, Book I) argued that temporal prosperity granted to the wicked is itself a mercy, an opportunity for conversion, but that persistence in evil ultimately unravels the soul's coherence entirely — precisely the dissolution Job describes.

On Wealth and Detachment: St. John Chrysostom's homilies on Job emphasize that the heaping of silver "as dust" (v. 16) is an image of disordered desire that degrades both the treasure and the one who hoards it. The Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes (§69) echoes this: "created goods should flow fairly to all." When they do not, the disorder Job describes becomes socially instantiated injustice, not merely personal vice.

On Eschatological Terror: St. Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job (the Church's foundational patristic commentary on this book) reads the "terrors like waters" of verse 20 as a figure of the Final Judgment, where the soul encounters divine holiness without the buffer of earthly distraction. Gregory notes that the wicked man fears what the righteous man awaits — the same divine presence becomes terror for one and joy for the other. This reading is consistent with CCC §1022's teaching on particular judgment: at death, each soul immediately receives its just retribution.

On Hope Within Darkness: Crucially, Catholic exegesis since Origen has resisted reading Job as a simple morality tale. Job's recitation of the wicked man's fate, coming from a sufferer who appears to fit the description, is a profound act of faith — he affirms divine justice even while experiencing its apparent absence. This mirrors the Church's own confession of faith under persecution.

These verses challenge a specific temptation endemic to contemporary Catholic life: the quiet assumption that material success is a reliable sign of God's favor, and that the suffering of the righteous signals divine neglect. Social media, prosperity-adjacent Christianity, and consumer culture all conspire to make the wicked man's "lying down rich" (v. 19) look like the goal of a blessed life.

Job's passage is a bracing corrective. Concretely, a Catholic reader might ask: What am I "heaping up as dust"? Time, status, financial security, career advancement — all are legitimate goods, but when accumulated anxiously as ends in themselves, they become the moth's house of verse 18: elaborately constructed, season-specific, ultimately uninhabitable.

The verse that most demands personal application is verse 17: the just will inherit what the wicked have hoarded. This is not a call to passivity but to the examined life. Am I preparing goods — financial, relational, spiritual — that will genuinely enrich others, or am I accumulating for a self that will one day be "gathered no more"? The daily Examen of St. Ignatius, applied to questions of wealth and attachment, is a concrete practice this passage invites.