Job - Chapter 21 | English Standard Version

  • 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, 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."
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