Job 21

¹ Then Job answered and said:

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

³ Bear with me, and I will speak;
after I have spoken, go on mocking.

⁴ As for me, is my complaint against man?
Why should I not be impatient?

⁵ Look at me and be appalled,
and lay your hand over your mouth.

⁶ When I think about it I am dismayed,
and shuddering seizes my flesh.

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

⁸ Their offspring are established with them in their sight,
and their descendants before their eyes.

⁹ Their houses are safe from fear,
and no rod of God is upon them.

¹⁰ Their bull mates without fail;
their cow calves and does not miscarry.

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

¹² They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
and rejoice to the sound of the flute.

¹³ They spend their days in prosperity
and in peace go down to Sheol.

¹⁴ They say to God, 'Depart from us!
We do not desire 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?'

¹⁶ Behold, is not their prosperity in their own hand?
The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

¹⁷ How often is the lamp of the wicked extinguished?
How often does disaster come upon them?
How often does God distribute pains in his anger?

¹⁸ How often are they like straw before the wind,
like chaff that the storm carries away?

¹⁹ You say, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children.'
Let him repay them, that they may know it.

²⁰ Let their own eyes see their destruction;
let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹ For what do they care for their house after them
when the number of their months is cut off?

²² Will anyone teach knowledge to God,
seeing that he judges those on high?

²³ One dies in full vigor,
completely secure and at ease.

²⁴ His pails are full of milk,
and the marrow of his bones is moist.

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

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

²⁷ Behold, I know your thoughts
and your schemes to wrong me.

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

²⁹ Have you not asked those who travel the roads?
Do you not accept their testimony —

³⁰ that the wicked man is spared in the day of calamity,
that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

³¹ Who declares his way to his face?
Who repays him for what he has done?

³² When he is carried to the grave,
a 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.

³⁴ How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
Your answers are nothing but falsehood.