Sophar declares the shortness of the prosperity of the wicked: and their sudden downfall.

¹ Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying:

² In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas.

³ The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me.¹

1. 20:3The phrase ‘spiritus intelligentiæ meæ’ means ‘the spirit of my understanding.’ However, in English, we tend to phrase that idea in this way: ‘my spirit of understanding.’ It could be phrased either way.(Conte)

⁴ This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth:

⁵ that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment.

⁶ If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds,

⁷ in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: “Where is he?”¹

1. 20:7These two verses refer to the Antichrist, in his attempt at a false ascension to Heaven.(Conte)

⁸ Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare.

⁹ The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him.

¹⁰ His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him.

¹¹ His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust.

¹² For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.

¹³ He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat.

¹⁴ His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him.

¹⁵ The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out.

¹⁶ He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him.

¹⁷ (May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.)

¹⁸ He will be repaid for all he has done, yet he will not be consumed; according to the multitude of his schemes, so also will he suffer.¹

1. 20:18According to the multitude of his devices: That is, his stratagems to gratify his passions and to oppress and destroy the poor.(Challoner)

¹⁹ For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build.

²⁰ And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them.

²¹ Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind.

²² When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him.

²³ May his stomach be filled, so that God may send forth the fury of his wrath to him and may rain down his battle upon him.

²⁴ He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass,¹

1. 20:24This last phrase can also be translated as: ‘will fall in a flying fortress.’ Such a translation implies an eschatological meaning to this passage, a passage which in my view refers to the Antichrist.(Conte)

²⁵ which had been drawn and had issued forth from its sheath, glittering in its bitterness: the horrible ones will go forth and approach over him.

²⁶ All darkness has been hidden in his secrecy. A fire that has not been set will devour him; he will be thrown down and forsaken in his tabernacle.

²⁷ The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him.

²⁸ The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath.

²⁹ This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord.