Job 21

¹Then Job answered:

²“Listen carefully to my words,

and let this be your consolation.

³Bear with me, and I will speak,

and after I have spoken, mock on.

⁴As for me, is my complaint against man?

Why should I not be impatient?

⁵Look at me, and be appalled,

and lay your hand upon your mouth.

⁶When I think of it I am dismayed,

and shuddering seizes my flesh.

⁷Why do the wicked live,

reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

⁸Their children are established in their presence,

and their offspring before their eyes.

⁹Their houses are safe from fear,

and no rod of God is upon them.

¹⁰Their bull breeds without fail;

their cow calves, and does not cast her calf.

¹¹They send forth their little ones like a flock,

and their children dance.

¹²They sing to the tambourine and the lyre,

and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

¹³They spend their days in prosperity,

and in peace they go down to Sheol.

¹⁴They say to God, ‘Depart from us!

We do not desire the knowledge of thy ways.

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

And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’

¹⁶Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?

The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

¹⁷“How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?

That their calamity comes upon them?

That God distributes pains in his anger?

¹⁸That they are like straw before the wind,

and like chaff that the storm carries away?

¹⁹You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their sons.’

Let him recompense it to themselves, that they may know it.

²⁰Let their own eyes see their destruction,

and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹For what do they care for their houses after them,

when the number of their months is cut off?

²²Will any teach God knowledge,

seeing that he judges those that are on high?

²³One dies in full prosperity,

being wholly at ease and secure,

²⁴his body full of fat

and the marrow of his bones moist.

²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul,

never having tasted of good.

²⁶They lie down alike in the dust,

and the worms cover them.

²⁷“Behold, I know your thoughts,

and your schemes to wrong me.

²⁸For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?

Where is the tent in which the wicked dwelt?’

²⁹Have you not asked those who travel the roads,

and do you not accept their testimony

³⁰that the wicked man is spared in the day of calamity,

that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

³¹Who declares his way to his face,

and who requites him for what he has done?

³²When he is borne to the grave,

watch is kept over his tomb.

³³The clods of the valley are sweet to him;

all men follow after him,

and those who go before him are innumerable.

³⁴How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?

There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”