Job 21
The full text of Job 21 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
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.
Translation notes (15)
- Job 21:4a Hebrew qatsar ruach, 'be short of spirit' (קצר רוח), is an idiom for loss of patience; rendered here as 'be impatient'. The Septuagint reads 'be angry', a stronger nuance that does not require a different Hebrew text.
- Job 21:5a The idiom sim yad al-peh, 'to lay a hand over the mouth', is an ancient Near Eastern gesture of stunned or deferential silence. Job later performs it himself before God (Job 40:4), and it appears elsewhere of nobles falling silent (Job 29:9) and nations shamed into speechlessness (Micah 7:16).
- Job 21:10a The Masoretic Text reads Hiphil yashkil from shakal, 'to miscarry/be bereaved' (contrast sakal, 'to prosper'), paired with Piel ʿiber, 'to impregnate', a stock breeding term. The verse thus employs established animal-breeding idiom to depict unimpeded fertility.
- Job 21:13a Hebrew berega' ordinarily means 'in a moment', and many take the sense to be that the wicked die suddenly, without lingering illness. This translation derives the word from the root raga', 'to be at rest', a reading supported by the Septuagint, which speaks of their lying down in the repose (anapausis) of Hades. Either way, the point is a death untroubled by judgment.
- Job 21:16a The Masoretic Text has hen lo beyadam tovam, 'behold, not in their hand is their prosperity.' Hebrew yes–no questions can be unmarked, so this may be read rhetorically: 'is not their prosperity in their own hand?' The Septuagint favors the declarative reading. The second clause is Job's disclaimer, distancing himself from 'the counsel of the wicked.'
- Job 21:17a Hebrew chavalim, 'pains' (חבלים), can also mean 'sorrows' or 'cords'; paired with yechalleq, 'distribute'/'divide', the line can be rendered 'distribute pains' or 'divide sorrows'. Both reflect the Masoretic Text; the Septuagint also reads 'pains'.
- Job 21:19a The words 'You say' are not in the Hebrew, which reads simply, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children.' They are supplied because Job appears to be quoting his friends' doctrine of deferred punishment in order to refute it; his rejoinder follows immediately: let the wicked man himself, not his children, bear the penalty.
- Job 21:20a The Septuagint renders the Hebrew term transliterated as ḥamato (חֲמָתוֹ) here as 'the wrath' rather than 'the poison,' though both are possible translations.
- Job 21:22a The Hebrew el, 'to, for', may be understood as 'among', yielding 'judges among those on high'. The Septuagint reads 'judges the high ones'.
- Job 21:24a The word rendered 'pails', ʿatinav (עֲטִינָיו), occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible and its meaning is uncertain; proposals include milk vessels, sides, or thighs. The Septuagint reads "his inward parts are full of fat," understanding the consonants of chalav 'milk' as chelev 'fat', a picture of bodily well-being matching the moist marrow of the parallel line.
- Job 21:29a The Hebrew reads literally, "and do you not recognize their signs (ʾōtōt, 'signs, tokens')?" — the tokens or accounts travelers bring as proof of what they have seen, rendered here as 'testimony'. In a world without written news, those who traveled the roads were regarded as authoritative witnesses to conditions abroad, and Job appeals to their common report against his friends' theology.
- Job 21:30a The Hebrew yimalet (יִמָּלֵט) means 'to escape' or 'to be delivered', indicating that the wicked may avoid calamity. The Septuagint provides a similar sense of preservation from judgment.
- Job 21:31a The Hebrew literally asks, 'Who declares his way to his face, and for what he has done, who repays him?' The rhetorical question implies that no one challenges the wicked.
- Job 21:32a Hebrew gadish (גָּדִישׁ), rendered here as 'tomb', elsewhere means a heap of grain (Exodus 22:6; Job 5:26) and here denotes the earthen mound raised over a grave. Keeping watch over such a mound guarded it from violation and marked the honor of the dead; Job's complaint is that even the wicked man's burial receives this deference.
- Job 21:33a The rare noun regev (רֶגֶב), 'clod of earth', occurs only here and in Job 38:38. That the clods of the nachal, 'wadi' or 'valley', are matequ, 'sweet', to the dead man is a striking image of honored burial: even the soil covering the wicked man's grave lies gently upon him, completing Job's protest that such men suffer no judgment even in death.
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