Job 20:17 - Exposition

He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks . The wicked man shall suffer, not only positive pains, but what casuists call the poena damni , or "penalty of loss"—deprivation, in other words, of blessings which he would naturally have enjoyed but for his wickedness. Zophar here threatens him with the Joss of those paradisiacal delights which the Orientals associated with water in all its forms, whether as פּלגות , or "rills derived from larger streams," or as כהרי , "rivers," or as כחלי , "brooks" or "torrents," now strong and impetuous, now reduced to a mere thread These are said poetically to flow with honey and butter, not, of course, in any literal sense, such as Ovid may have meant, when, in describing the golden age, he said—

" Flumina jam lactis, jam fiumina nectaris ibant ;"

('Metaph.,' 1.111.)

but as fertilizing the land through which they ran, and so causing it to abound with bees and cattle, whence would be derived butter and honey. Compare the terms in which Canaan was described to the Israelites ( Exodus 3:8 , Exodus 3:17 ; Exodus 13:5 ; Deuteronomy 26:9 , Deuteronomy 26:15 , etc.).