Job 24:20, commentary and pictures

The verse falls within the debate between Job and his three friends about Job's afflictions. Within that debate it belongs to Job's contrast between the lives of people who oppress the vulnerable and his own life of helping them. It is part of Job's answer, which expresses confidence in God's mercy and describes the end of the wicked. On another reading, it is one of the assurances in Eliphaz's speech.

The verse's place in an inspired book does not make every statement in it true. Job's friends generally stated truths but wrongly applied them to Job. Suffering does not prove that a person is under God's displeasure. Therefore the verse's description of the wicked being forgotten and destroyed cannot be treated as proof that Job's affliction showed him to be wicked.

The verse describes the final destruction of the wicked, when they are forgotten and their wickedness is broken away completely, as a tree is broken with trunk and roots. The grave mentioned in the surrounding verses refers not necessarily to ordinary death but to that future destruction, when sin and sinners are swept from the earth and righteousness has supreme sway. The worm that feeds on them is the same as the worm in Isaiah 66:24, at the beginning of the new-earth state.