Job 21

Job

¹Then Job replied:

²“Listen carefully to my words;

let this be the consolation you give me.

³Bear with me while I speak,

and after I have spoken, mock on.

⁴“Is my complaint directed to a human being?

Why should I not be impatient?

⁵Look at me and be appalled;

clap your hand over your mouth.

⁶When I think about this, I am terrified;

trembling seizes my body.

⁷Why do the wicked live on,

growing old and increasing in power?

⁸They see their children established around them,

their offspring before their eyes.

⁹Their homes are safe and free from fear;

the rod of God is not on them.

¹⁰Their bulls never fail to breed;

their cows calve and do not miscarry.

¹¹They send forth their children as a flock;

their little ones dance about.

¹²They sing to the music of timbrel and lyre;

they make merry to the sound of the pipe.

¹³They spend their years in prosperity

and go down to the grave in peace.

¹⁴Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone!

We have no desire to know your ways.

¹⁵Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?

What would we gain by praying to him?’

¹⁶But their prosperity is not in their own hands,

so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked.

¹⁷“Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out?

How often does calamity come upon them,

the fate God allots in his anger?

¹⁸How often are they like straw before the wind,

like chaff swept away by a gale?

¹⁹It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of the wicked for their children.’

Let him repay the wicked, so that they themselves will experience it!

²⁰Let their own eyes see their destruction;

let them drink the cup of the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹For what do they care about the families they leave behind

when their allotted months come to an end?

²²“Can anyone teach knowledge to God,

since he judges even the highest?

²³One person dies in full vigor,

completely secure and at ease,

²⁴well nourished in body,

bones rich with marrow.

²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul,

never having enjoyed anything good.

²⁶Side by side they lie in the dust,

and worms cover them both.

²⁷“I know full well what you are thinking,

the schemes by which you would wrong me.

²⁸You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great,

the tents where the wicked lived?’

²⁹Have you never questioned those who travel?

Have you paid no regard to their accounts—

³⁰that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity,

that they are delivered from the day of wrath?

³¹Who denounces their conduct to their face?

Who repays them for what they have done?

³²They are carried to the grave,

and watch is kept over their tombs.

³³The soil in the valley is sweet to them;

everyone follows after them,

and a countless throng goes before them.

³⁴“So how can you console me with your nonsense?

Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood!”