The reproach with which he reproaches his opponents: Shall one teach God understanding? is one which also applies to himself; for when he says that God, if He punishes, must visit punishment upon the evil-doer himself, and not on his children, it is an unbecoming dictation with regard to God's doing. We should be mistaken in supposing that the poet, in Job 21:19-21, brings forward a concealed contradiction to the Mosaic doctrine of retribution; nowhere in the Old Testament, not even in the Mosaic law, is it taught, that God visits the sins of the fathers on the children, while He allows them themselves to go free, Exo 20:5, comp. Deu 24:16; Eze 18:1; Jer 31:29. What Job asserts, that the sinner himself must endure the punishment of his sins, not his children instead of him, is true; but the thought lying in the background, that God does not punish where He ought to punish, is sinful. Thus here Job again falls into error, which he must by and by penitently acknowledge and confess, by speaking unbecomingly of God: the God of the future is again vanished from him behind the clouds of temptation, and he is unable to understand and love the God of the present; He is a mystery to him, the incomprehensibility of which causes him pain. “The joyous thought of the future, which a little before struggled forth, again vanishes, because the present, into the abyss of which he is again drawn down, has remained perfectly dark the whole time, and as yet no bridge has been revealed crossing from this side to that.”
