Albert Barnes Commentary Job 24:19

"Drought and heat consume the snow waters: [So doth] Sheol [those that] have sinned." — Job 24:19 (ASV)

Drought and heat consume the snow-waters—Margin, “violently take” (see the notes at Job 6:17). The word rendered “consume,” and in the margin “violently take” (יגזלו yı̂gâzelû), properly means to strip off, as skin from the flesh, and then to pluck or tear away by force—to strip, to spoil, to rob. The meaning here is that the heat seems to seize and carry away the snow waters, to bear them off as a plunderer does spoil.

There is much poetic beauty in this image. The “snow-waters” here mean the waters produced by the melting of the snow on the hills, which swell the rivulets in the valleys below. Those waters, Job says, are carried along in rivulets over the burning sands until the drought and heat absorb them all, and they vanish away (see the beautiful description of this which Job gives in Job 6:15-18). Those waters vanish away silently and gently.

The stream becomes smaller and smaller as it winds along in the desert until it all disappears. So Job says it is with these wicked people whom he is describing. Instead of being violently cut off, or hurried out of life by some sudden and dreadful judgment as his friends maintained, they were allowed to linger on calmly and peaceably. They continued, like the stream gliding gently in the desert, until they quietly disappeared by death, just as the waters sink gently into the sands or evaporate into the air. The whole description is that of a peaceful death, as distinct from one of violence.

So does the grave those who have sinned—There is a wonderful terseness and energy in the original words here, which our translation expresses very feebly. The Hebrew is (חטאו שׁאול she'ôl châṭâ'û), “the grave, they have sinned.” The sense is correctly expressed in the common version. The meaning is that those who have sinned die in the same quiet and gentle manner with which waters vanish in the desert. By “those who have sinned,” Job means those to whom he had just referred—robbers, adulterers, murderers, etc.—and the sense of the whole is that they died a calm and peaceful death (see the notes at Job 21:13, where he advances the same sentiment as here).