Job 21

Job 21:1  
Then Job answered,

Job 21:2  
“Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation.

Job 21:3  
Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on.

Job 21:4  
As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient?

Job 21:5  
Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth.

Job 21:6  
When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh.

Job 21:7  
“Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power?

Job 21:8  
Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes.

Job 21:9  
Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.

Job 21:10  
Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry.

Job 21:11  
They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance.

Job 21:12  
They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe.

Job 21:13  
They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol.

Job 21:14  
They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways.

Job 21:15  
What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’

Job 21:16  
Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

Job 21:17  
“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?

Job 21:18  
How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?

Job 21:19  
You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.

Job 21:20  
Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

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

Job 21:22  
“Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high?

Job 21:23  
One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.

Job 21:24  
His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened.

Job 21:25  
Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good.

Job 21:26  
They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them.

Job 21:27  
“Behold, I know your thoughts, the plans with which you would wrong me.

Job 21:28  
For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’

Job 21:29  
Haven’t you asked wayfaring men? Don’t you know their evidences,

Job 21:30  
that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the day of wrath?

Job 21:31  
Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repay him what he has done?

Job 21:32  
Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb.

Job 21:33  
The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him.

Job 21:34  
So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”


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