Job 21

21 ¹ Then Job answered and said: ² "Listen carefully to my words, and let this be the comfort you offer me. ³ Bear with me while I speak, and after I have spoken, you may go on mocking. ⁴ As for me, is my complaint against a mere man? Why should I not lose my patience? ⁵ Look at me and be appalled, and put your hand over your mouth. ⁶ When I remember it, I am terrified, and shuddering grips my flesh. ⁷ Why do the wicked go on living, growing old and increasing in power? ⁸ Their children are settled and secure with them before their eyes, and their offspring before their sight. ⁹ Their houses are safe and free from fear, and no rod of God falls upon them. ¹⁰ Their bull breeds and never fails; their cow calves and does not miscarry. ¹¹ They let their little ones run free like a flock, and their children skip about. ¹² They sing to the tambourine and the lyre and celebrate to the sound of the pipe. ¹³ They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to the grave. ¹⁴ Yet they say to God, 'Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways. ¹⁵ What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what would we gain by praying to him?' ¹⁶ But their prosperity is not in their own hands; I want nothing to do with the counsel of the wicked. ¹⁷ How often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does their disaster fall upon them? How often does God deal out pains in his anger? ¹⁸ How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff that a storm sweeps away? ¹⁹ You say, 'God stores up a man's punishment for his children.' Let him repay the man himself, so that he learns it. ²⁰ Let his own eyes see his ruin, and let him drink the wrath of the Almighty. ²¹ For what does he care about his household after him, when his months are cut short? ²² Can anyone teach God knowledge, since it is he who judges those on high? ²³ One person dies in full vigor, wholly at ease and secure, ²⁴ his body well nourished and the marrow of his bones still moist. ²⁵ Another dies with a bitter soul, never having tasted any good. ²⁶ Together they lie down in the dust, and the worms cover them both. ²⁷ Look, I know your thoughts, and your schemes to wrong me. ²⁸ For you say, 'Where now is the house of the noble? Where is the tent where the wicked lived?' ²⁹ Have you never asked those who travel the roads? Will you not accept the proof they give— ³⁰ that the evil man is spared in the day of disaster, that he is delivered in the day of wrath? ³¹ Who confronts him to his face for his conduct, and who repays him for what he has done? ³² He is carried to the grave, and a watch is kept over his tomb. ³³ The soil of the valley is sweet to him; everyone follows after him, and those before him are beyond counting. ³⁴ So how can you comfort me with empty words? Your answers are nothing but falsehood."