Job 20:16

He shall suck the poison of asps,.... Or "the head of asps" (u); for their poison lies in their heads, particularly in their "teeth" (w); or rather is a liquor in the gums, yellow like oil (x);

He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay him. Shall suck - it shall turn out that he has sucked the poison, etc.

That which he hath greedily and industriously sucked in as pleasant and wholesome nourishment, shall in the issue be as ungrateful and destructive to him as the poison or head (for the Hebrew word signifies both, and the poison lies in the head) of asps would be to one that sucketh it. The viper’ s tongue, together with its teeth, in which the poison lurks, which it conveys by biting a man.

Job 20:16 He shall suck the poison of asps: the viper’ s tongue shall slay him.Ver. 16. He shall suck the poison of asps] That lieth in his head, whence also it hath its name in the original. Caput aspidis suger, saith the Vulgate. It is said of the toad that he hath in his head a stone of great virtue, called Bufonites. But the asp hath nothing in his head but strong poison. This the rich wretch shall suck, like as he was wont to suck the blood of the poor oppressed, to eat their flesh, Psalms 14:4, and to eviscerate them. The viper’ s tongue shall slay him] Perinde cedet ei maleficium, saith Junius; his wickedness shall prove his bane, unless he presently take the antidote of repentance, whereby to expel the poison ere it get to the vitals. Repentance is the soul’ s best vomit, the hardest, but wholesomest medicine. It is repentance unto life; whereas the sins of the impenitent are mortal, saith St John 1 John 5:17, or rather immortal, as saith St Paul, Romans 2:5. The hand that is here and elsewhere lifted up in threatening, Isaiah 26:11, will fall down in punishing. "The wages of sin is death." When the barbarians saw the viper hanging on St Paul’ s hand, they looked when he would fall down dead, Acts 28:4; Acts 28:6. The devil’ s design was there to have slain Paul, but he was defeated. And Brentius holdeth that the metaphor here used is taken not so much from serpents, whose venom lieth in their tongues, as from Satan, who, by the serpent in Paradise, cast our first parents into all kind of evils. Another there is who thus explains this text, Caput viperis suget. When vipers engender, the female sucketh the head of the male, and biteth it off with great delight; then she conceiveth her young ones, which eat out her belly. So the oppressor, getting the poor man’ s goods, they seem sweet unto him, but at the last his sin findeth him out, for it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as Solomon saith of drunkenness (which Austin calleth dulce venenum, a sweet poison), Proverbs 23:32.

Verse 16. He shall suck the poison of asps] That delicious morsel, that secret, easily-besetting sin, so palatable, and so pleasurable, shall act on the life of his soul, as the poison of asps would do on the life of his body. The poison is called the gall of asps, it being anciently supposed that the poison of serpents consists in their gall, which is thought to be copiously exuded when those animals are enraged; as it has been often seen that their bite is not poisonous when they are not angry. Pliny, in speaking of the various parts of animals, Hist. Nat. lib. xi., c. 37, states, from this circumstance, that in the gall, the poison of serpents consists; ne quis miretur id (fel) venenum esse serpentum. And in lib. xxviii., c. 9, he ranks the gall of horses among the poisons: Damnatur (fel) equinum tantum inter venena. We see, therefore, that the gall was considered to be the source whence the poison of serpents was generated, not only in Arabia, but also in Italy.

16. A slight change of the figure. The meaning is: that which he sucks shall prove the poison of asps.

He shall suck the poison of asps - That which he swallowed as pleasant nutriment, shall become the most deadly poison; or the consequence shall be as if he had sucked the poison of asps.

16. The viper — Eph’ha. Tristram (Nat. Hist.) identifies it with the sand-viper, a species of small size, about a foot long, varying in colour and common in Arabia and Syria.