Job 8:21

21 He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy.

Job 8:21 Meaning and Commentary

Job 8:21

Till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with
rejoicing.
] Directing himself to Job; and suggesting, that if he was a perfect, sincere, and upright man. God would not cast him away utterly, but help him out of his present circumstances, and restore him to prosperity; and not leave him until he had filled his heart with so much joy, that his mouth and lips, being also full of it, should break forth in strong expressions of it, and in the most exulting strains, as if it was a time of jubilee with him; see ( Psalms 126:2 ) ; but Bildad tacitly insinuates that Job was not a perfect and good man but an evil doer, whom God had cast away and would not help; and this he concluded from the distressed circumstances he was now in; which was no rule of judgment, and a very unfair way of reasoning, since love and hatred are not to be known by outward prosperity and adversity, ( Ecclesiastes 9:1 ) . Bar Tzemach interprets "laughing" as at his own goodness, and "rejoicing" as at the evil of the wicked.

Job 8:21 In-Context

19 See, these are their happy ways, and out of the earth still others will spring.
20 "See, God will not reject a blameless person, nor take the hand of evildoers.
21 He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy.
22 Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more."
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.