Job 21

¹Then Job answered and said:

² “Keep listening to my words,
and let this be your comfort.

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 over your mouth.

⁶When I remember, I am dismayed,
and shuddering seizes my flesh.

⁷ Why do the wicked live,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

⁸Their offspring are established in their presence,
and their descendants 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 miscarry.

¹¹They send out their little boys 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 your ways.

¹⁵ What 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 children.’
Let him pay it out to them, 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?

²² Will any teach God knowledge,
seeing that he judges those who are on high?

²³One dies in his full vigor,
being wholly at ease and secure,

²⁴his pails full of milk
and the marrow of his bones moist.

²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul,
never having tasted of prosperity.

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 lived?’

²⁹Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
and do you not accept their testimony

³⁰that the evil 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 repays him for what he has done?

³²When he is carried to the grave,
watch is kept over his tomb.

³³ The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
all mankind follows 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.”

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