John Gill Commentary Job 18:20

"They that come after shall be astonished at his day, As they that went before were affrighted." — Job 18:20 (ASV)

They that come after [him] shall be astonished at his day ,
&c.] At the day of his calamity and distress, ruin and destruction, see (Psalms 37:13) (Obadiah 1:12) ; it would be extremely amazing to them how it should be, that a man who was in such flourishing and prosperous circumstances, should be brought at once, he and his family, into such extreme poverty, and into such a distressed and forlorn condition; they should be, as it were, thunderstruck at it, not being able to account for it: by these are meant such as are younger than the wicked man, and that continue longer than he, yet upon the spot when his calamity befell; or else posterity in later times, who would be made acquainted with the whole affair, and be surprised at the relation of it.

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as they that went before were affrighted ;
not that lived before the times of the wicked man, for they could not see his day, or be spectators of his ruin, and so be frightened at it; but his contemporaries, who are said to be those that went before, not with respect to the wicked man, but with respect to younger persons or posterity that were after; so Bar Tzemach interprets it, which were in his time, or his contemporaries; and Mr. Broughton,

``the present took an horror;'' a late learned commentator ^F16 renders the words, western and eastern; as if all people in the world, east and west, would be amazed and astonished at the sudden and utter destruction of this wicked man.

FOOTNOTES:

• F16: Schultens.