Job 21

¹ Then 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?
⁵ Look at me and be appalled;
clap your hand over your mouth.
⁶ When I think about this, I am terrified;
trembling seizes my body.
⁷ Why do the wicked live on,
growing old and increasing in power?
⁸ They see their children established around them,
their offspring before their eyes.
⁹ Their homes are safe and free from fear;
the rod of God is not on them.
¹⁰ Their bulls never fail to breed;
their cows calve and do not miscarry.
¹¹ They send forth their children as a flock;
their little ones dance about.
¹² They sing to the music of timbrel and lyre;
they make merry to the sound of the pipe.
¹³ They spend their years in prosperity
and go down to the grave in peace.
¹⁴ Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone!
We have no desire to know your ways.
¹⁵ Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
What would we gain by praying to him?’
¹⁶ But 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?
¹⁸ How often are they like straw before the wind,
like chaff swept away by a gale?
¹⁹ It 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!
²⁰ Let their own eyes see their destruction;
let them drink the cup of the wrath of the Almighty.
²¹ For 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?
²³ One person dies in full vigor,
completely secure and at ease,
²⁴ well nourished in body,
bones rich with marrow.
²⁵ Another dies in bitterness of soul,
never having enjoyed anything good.
²⁶ Side 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.
²⁸ You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great,
the tents where the wicked lived?’
²⁹ Have you never questioned those who travel?
Have you paid no regard to their accounts—
³⁰ that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity,
that they are delivered from the day of wrath?
³¹ Who denounces their conduct to their face?
Who repays them for what they have done?
³² They are carried to the grave,
and watch is kept over their tombs.
³³ The 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!”