Job 21

¹ Then Job answered,

² “Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation.

³ Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on.

⁴ As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient?

⁵ Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth.

⁶ When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh.

⁷ “Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?

⁸ Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes.

⁹ Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.

¹⁰ Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry.

¹¹ They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance.

¹² They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe.

¹³ They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol.

¹⁴ They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways.

¹⁵ What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’

¹⁶ Behold, their prosperity is not 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 on them, that God distributes sorrows in his anger?

¹⁸ How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?

¹⁹ You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.

²⁰ Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹ For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off?

²² “Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high?

²³ One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

²⁴ His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened.

²⁵ Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good.

²⁶ They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them.

²⁷ “Behold, I know your thoughts, the plans with which you would wrong me.

²⁸ For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’

²⁹ Haven’t you asked wayfaring men? Don’t you know their evidences,

³⁰ that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the day of wrath?

³¹ Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repay him what he has done?

³² Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb.

³³ The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him.

³⁴ So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”