Certainly God does not cease from benefiting the wicked, in order to show that he has no hate against them, so that they may not say, “Since God hates us, he will never open the door of repentance to us.” And while he severely and sternly acts with the righteous, he nevertheless offers his love to the unrighteous. The rewards to be granted in time for [righteous] virtues are the future signs of the good works they do.
Since you believe to be wise and to know the reason why I suffer these afflictions, now answer my question. Why does it happen that very often many impious persons reach an old age in their wealth?… Their fields produce large crops, and they are delighted by their children and enjoy a constant abundance. They fear no one and receive no blow sent them by God. Their plowing cow does not give birth to an immature fetus, that is, it does not generate an imperfect or dead fetus, and their wives have no miscarriages. And they remain in prosperity like a flock, that is, free from care.
Ver. 13. They spend their days in wealth, and in a point of time go down to the lower parts.
49. Yes, O blessed man, thou hadst for long dilated on their joys, how dost thou now declare that 'in a point of time they go down to the lower parts,' saving that all length of time of the present life is then known to be but a 'point,' when it is cut short by the end? For when a person is brought to the last end, he no longer keeps aught of the past, seeing that all the periods of time have elapsed, he has nought in the future, in that there remain not to him the moments of a single hour. So the life, which could be thus narrowed, was but a 'point' of time. For as we have before said, we set down the style in a point, and lift it up; and so he as it were touched life by a point who received and lost it. By a 'point' it is possible that this also may be understood, that it often happens that they that were long borne with in wickedness, are seized by sudden death, that it should not even be granted them to bewail before death the things they have done wrong, but seeing that occasionally the life of the righteous also is cut short by a sudden end, we shall understand it better, if we take the words of their temporal life, in that whatever was capable of passing away was sudden. But the friends of blessed Job, who believed him to be unrighteous on this account that they saw him afflicted with scourges, rightly have the truth shewn them by the voice of that holy man concerning the blooming and ruin of the wicked, in that prosperity in the present life is no witness to innocency, since many are brought back to everlasting life by scourges, and very many die without a scourge to be dragged to infinite woes.
To answer the objection that their prosperity endures for a little while, or "like a speech", (20:5) he then says, "They spend their days in prosperity," as if to say: All the days of their lives are passed in prosperity. It is necessary that they experience death from the common condition of men in the end, but they still suffer this without undue anguish beforehand, and so he says, "and they go down to Sheol in a moment," in death. For all the ancients before the coming of the Redeemer, about whom he had spoken above, (19:25) descended to the underworld, however some weighed with adversities in life did not immediately descend to Sheol, but only after suffering many bitter things, as Jacob says in Genesis, "Moaning will descend to my son in hell." (37:35) But those who flourished in prosperity until death descend to Sheol as if in a moment.
[AD 373] Ephrem the Syrian on Job 21:7-14