Job 21:28
For you say,
Where is the house of the nobleman?
Where is the dwelling of the wicked?
Whenever we drive around a nice neighborhood, my wife always asks what do all these people do to have so much money. I grew up relatively poor with a single mom and my dad out of the picture. My wife grew up with both parents, but only her dad worked, and they were not wealthy. Since before we were married, we have been financially conservative, but she is only verbalizing what I think. What did all these people do to afford these houses?
‘For’ was also ‘will’, ‘when’, ‘if’, and left off.
‘Nobleman’ was also ‘prince’ or ‘great man’.
‘Dwelling’ was ‘tent’ the other six times.
When I was in the market for our first house, I was balancing two pieces of advice. One was to buy enough house so you never have to move. The other was to limit your payments to a portion of one salary. We found a big enough place in a nice enough area, but we moved as soon as using the nearby schools was real and not acceptable.
In context, I wonder if Job is thinking that everyone hearing him is plotting to take over his house and whatever is left as soon as he dies. Even though lots of his stuff was taken away, he still had better than everyone else. They would be calling him ‘great man’ maybe in mockery and wicked to spite him. The idea that his stuff is still nice follows the context in the following verses as well.
As I have dabbled in trying to find out what the wealthy do that we do not, the answer seems to be that they take advantage of everyone else. The ultra wealthy own nothing except stock, and they live off borrowed money that they use to negate earnings to avoid taxes. It is a dirty scheme (in the American sense of the word), and they all use it directing blame at their CPAs who run the numbers. I want to be a good steward of God’s money, but their means do not seem to follow God’s intent. I will probably always pay more in taxes than I could and never get as rich as I could, but I will be following God whichever way He leads.
Written 6/11/26, Posted 7/22/26, Job 514/~1070