Job 21 / 42
- 1
(Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper)
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,
and after I have spoken, mock on.
- 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 remember, 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 in their presence,
and their descendants before their eyes.
- 9
Their houses are safe from fear,
and no rod of God is upon them.
- 10
Their bull breeds without fail;
their cow calves and does not miscarry.
- 11
They send out their little boys like a flock,
and their children dance.
- 12
They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
- 13
They spend their days in prosperity,
and in peace they go down to Sheol.
- 14
They 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?'
- 16
Behold, 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?
- 18
That they are like straw before the wind,
and like chaff that the storm carries away?
- 19
You say, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children.'
Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
- 20
Let their own eyes see their destruction,
and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
- 21
For 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?
- 23
One dies in his full vigor,
being wholly at ease and secure,
- 24
his pails full of milk
and the marrow of his bones moist.
- 25
Another dies in bitterness of soul,
never having tasted of prosperity.
- 26
They lie down alike in the dust,
and the worms cover 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,
and do you not accept their testimony
- 30
that the evil 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,
and who repays him for what he has done?
- 32
When 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.
- 34
How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood."