Job 21

¹ Job spoke next. He said:

² Listen, only listen to my words; this is the consolation you can offer me.

³ Let me have my say; you may jeer when I have spoken.

⁴ Do you think I bear a grudge against man? Have I no reason to be out of patience?

⁵ Hear what I have to say, and you will be dumbfounded, will place your hands over your mouths.

⁶ I myself am appalled at the very thought, and my flesh begins to shudder.

⁷ Why do the wicked still live on, their power increasing with their age?

⁸ They see their posterity ensured, and their offspring grow before their eyes.

⁹ The peace of their houses has nothing to fear, the rod that God wields is not for them.

¹⁰ No mishap with their bulls at breeding-time, nor miscarriage with their cows at calving.

¹¹ They let their infants frisk like lambs, their children dance like deer.

¹² They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the flute.

¹³ They end their lives in happiness and go down in peace to Sheol.

¹⁴ Yet these were the ones who said to God, ‘Go away! We do not choose to learn your ways.

¹⁵ What is the point of our serving Shaddai? What profit should we get from praying to him?’

¹⁶ Is it not true, they held their fortune in their own two hands, and in their counsels, left no room for God?

¹⁷ Do we often see a wicked man’s light put out, or disaster overtaking him, or all his goods destroyed by the wrath of God?

¹⁸ How often do we see him harassed like a straw before the wind, or swept off like chaff before a gale?

¹⁹ God, you say, reserves the man’s punishment for his children. No! Let him bear the penalty himself, and suffer under it!

²⁰ Let him see his ruin with his own eyes, and himself drink the anger of Shaddai.

²¹ When he has gone, how can the fortunes of his House affect him, when the number of his months is cut off?

²² But who can give lessons in wisdom to God, to him who is judge of those on high?

²³ And again: one man dies in the fullness of his strength, in all possible happiness and ease,

²⁴ with his thighs all heavy with fat, and the marrow of his bones undried.

²⁵ Another dies with bitterness in his heart, never having tasted happiness.

²⁶ Together now they lie in the dust with worms for covering.

²⁷ I know well what is in your mind, the spiteful thoughts you entertain about me.

²⁸ ‘What has become of the great lord’s house,’ you say ‘where is the tent where the wicked lived?’

²⁹ Have you never asked those that have travelled, or have you misunderstood the tale they told,

³⁰ ‘The wicked man is spared for the day of disaster, and carried off in the day of wrath’?

³¹ But who is there then to accuse him to his face for his deeds, and pay him back for what he has done,

³² when he is on his way to his burial, when men are watching at his grave.

³³ The clods of the valley are laid gently on him, and a whole procession walks behind him.

³⁴ So what sense is there in your empty consolation? What nonsense are your answers!