Chapter 21

¹Then Job answered,

²“Listen diligently to my speech.

Let this be your consolation.

³Allow me, and I also will speak;

After I have spoken, mock on.

⁴As for me, is my complaint to man?

Why shouldn’t I be impatient?

⁵Look at me, and be astonished.

Lay your hand on your mouth.

⁶When 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?

⁸Their child is established with them in their sight,

Their offspring before their eyes.

⁹Their houses are safe from fear,

Neither is the rod of God upon them.

¹⁰Their bulls breed without fail.

Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry.

¹¹They send forth their little ones like a flock.

Their children dance.

¹²They sing to the tambourine and harp,

And rejoice at the sound of the pipe.

¹³They spend their days in prosperity.

In an instant they go down to Sheol.

¹⁴They tell God, ‘Depart from us,

For we don’t want to know about your ways.

¹⁵What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?

What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’

¹⁶Behold, 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?

¹⁸That they are as stubble before the wind,

As chaff that the storm carries away?

¹⁹You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’

Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.

²⁰Let his own eyes see his destruction.

Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹For what does he care for his house after him,

When the number of his months is cut off?

²²“Shall any teach God knowledge,

Seeing he judges those who are high?

²³One dies in his full strength,

Being wholly at ease and quiet.

²⁴His pails are full of milk.

The marrow of his bones is moistened.

²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul,

And never tastes of good.

²⁶They lie down alike in the dust,

The worm covers them.

²⁷“Behold, I know your thoughts,

The devices with which you would wrong me.

²⁸For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?

Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’

²⁹Haven’t you asked wayfaring men?

Don’t you know their evidences,

³⁰That the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity?

That they are led forth to the day of wrath?

³¹Who shall declare his way to his face?

Who shall repay him what he has done?

³²Yet shall he be borne to the grave,

Men shall keep watch over the tomb.

³³The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him.

All men shall draw after him,

As there were innumerable before him.

³⁴So how can you comfort me with nonsense,

Seeing that in your answers there remains only falsehood?”