Job 27:21 Meaning and Explanation

The east wind, dreaded in the ancient Near East as a hot, withering blast from the desert, becomes Job's image for judgment. It carries the wicked man away, and a storm hurls him out of his place, the home and standing he thought were his own. He is swept off like chaff before the wind.

Scripture often pictures the ungodly as chaff that the wind drives away, weightless and rootless before the breath of God. The man who built on oppression has no anchor; the first great wind removes him entirely. The verse sobers the reader about the frailty of any life not grounded in God, and points by contrast to the blessed one who is like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which the wind cannot uproot. To be rooted in God is to stand when the storms of judgment blow.