What does Job Chapter 20 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

As stated in the chapter heading, Sophar declares the brevity of the prosperity of the wicked and describes their sudden downfall. Hurried along by conflicting thoughts and stirred by an internal spirit of understanding, Sophar intervenes to answer Job's reproaches. He appeals to ancient history from the beginning when man was first placed on the earth, declaring that he knows that the earthly renown of the wicked is fleeting, and the celebration of hypocrites endures merely an instant. Even if an oppressor's pride rises up to heaven and his head touches the clouds, he will ultimately be destroyed like a dunghill, so that onlookers will ask where he has gone. Sophar says he will vanish like a fleeing dream and disappear like a nocturnal vision; the eye that saw him will see him no more, and his home will never behold him again.

Sophar portrays the oppressor's household falling into ruin: his children will be crushed by poverty, and his own hands will return his sorrow upon him. The vices of his youth will remain embedded in his bones, sleeping with him in the dust of the grave. Though evil tastes sweet in the sinner's mouth so that he rolls it under his tongue and conceals it in his throat, that plundered food transforms inside him into the lethal gall of asps. The ill-gotten wealth he swallowed will be violently vomited up, as God forcibly extracts it from his belly. Instead of enjoying life, he will suck the venomous head of asps and be slain by the tongue of vipers. Sophar says to let him not see the streams of the river or the brooks flowing with honey and butter.

Sophar emphasizes that the wicked man will suffer punishment for all he did, yet not consumption, and he shall suffer according to the multitude of his devices. The Challoner annotation clarifies that these devices refer to the oppressor's cunning stratagems employed to satisfy his selfish passions and to plunder and crush the poor. Because he broke in, stripped the impoverished, and taken away a house he did not build, his insatiable appetite will bring him no enduring possession. When his abundance reaches its peak, distress and burning sorrow will overwhelm him. Sophar wishes the belly filled so that God may send wrath and rain His war upon him.

In attempting to flee from weapons of iron, the oppressor shall fall upon a bow of brass. The drawn sword will flash forth from its scabbard, glittering in his bitterness while terrors assault him on every side. Total darkness is stored up in his secret hideouts, and a fire that is not kindled shall devour him, and he will be afflicted when left in his tabernacle. The heavens themselves will disclose his iniquity, and the earth will rise in active rebellion against him. The offspring of his house will be exposed, and he will be pulled down in the day of divine wrath. Sophar concludes that this catastrophic ruin constitutes the portion and inheritance decreed by God for a wicked man.