Job21

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!”