Job 21

1 Then Job answered,⋮

2 “Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation.⋮

3 Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on.⋮

4 As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient?⋮

5 Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth.⋮

6 When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh.⋮

7 “Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?⋮

8 Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes.⋮

9 Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.⋮

10 Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry.⋮

11 They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance.⋮

12 They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe.⋮

13 They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol.⋮

14 They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways.⋮

15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’⋮

16 Behold, their prosperity is not 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 on them, that God distributes sorrows in his anger?⋮

18 How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?⋮

19 You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.⋮

20 Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.⋮

21 For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off?⋮

22 “Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high?⋮

23 One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.⋮

24 His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened.⋮

25 Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good.⋮

26 They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them.⋮

27 “Behold, I know your thoughts, the plans with which you would wrong me.⋮

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

29 Haven’t you asked wayfaring men? Don’t you know their evidences,⋮

30 that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the day of wrath?⋮

31 Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repay him what he has done?⋮

32 Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb.⋮

33 The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him.⋮

34 So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”⋮