Job 20:12

"Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth,

Though he hide it under his tongue,

Though he spare it, and will not let it go,

But keep it still within his mouth;

Yet his food in his bowels is turned,

It is the gall of asps within him.

He hath swallowed down riches, and he

shall vomit them up again;

God will cast them out of his belly.

He shall suck the poison of asps;

The viper's tongue shall slay him.

He shall not look upon the rivers,

The flowing streams of honey and butter.

That which he labored for shall he restore, and shall not swallow it down;

According to the substance which he hath gotten, he shall not rejoice.

For he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor;

He hath violently taken away a house, and he shall not build it up."

"Sweet in his mouth ... gall within him" (Job 20:12,14). The fruit of evil is not nearly so dramatic and sudden as Zophar stated here. In some instances, the reward of evil will not occur in this life at all, but in the life to come. The thing that Zophar was driving at here was that of denouncing Job, whose disasters indeed came suddenly.

"The viper's tongue shall slay him" (Job 20:16). Like much of the rest of Zophar's tirade, this had no relation whatever to truth. It was not the viper's tongue that killed people; it was its fangs loaded with venom.

"He hath oppressed and forsaken the poor" (Job 20:19). Zophar, of course, means that this is what Job has done. "Job is the culprit upon whom God is wreaking vengeance because of his oppressing the poor."[8] That, of course, is exactly what Zophar was saying here.

"He hath violently taken away a house, and he shall not build it up" (Job 20:19). From the marginal reference here, we learn that the meaning of the last clause is, "He hath not built it up." He took a house that was not his, a house he had not built. Zophar here was brutally charging Job with all kinds of sins, without any evidence whatever; he was multiplying his allegations in the hope of hitting something that might have been true.