Job 21

Job: God Will Punish the Wicked

¹ Then Job answered:

² “Listen carefully to my words;

let this be your consolation to me.

³ Bear with me while I speak;

then, after I have spoken, you may go on mocking.

⁴ Is my complaint against a man?

Then why should I not be impatient?

⁵ Look at me and be appalled;

put your hand over your mouth.

⁶ When I remember, terror takes hold,

and my body trembles in horror.

⁷ Why do the wicked live on,

growing old and increasing in power?

⁸ Their descendants are established around them,

and their offspring before their eyes.

⁹ Their homes are safe from fear;

no rod of punishment from God is upon them.

¹⁰ Their bulls breed without fail;

their cows bear calves and do not miscarry.

¹¹ They send forth their little ones like a flock;

their children skip about,

¹² singing to the tambourine and lyre

and making merry at the sound of the flute.

¹³ They spend their days in prosperity

and go down to Sheol in peace.^a

¹⁴ Yet they say to God: ‘Leave us alone!

For we have no desire to know Your ways.

¹⁵ Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him,

and what would we gain if we pray to Him?’

¹⁶ Still, their prosperity is not in their own hands,

so I stay far from the counsel of the wicked.

¹⁷ How often is the lamp of the wicked put out?

Does disaster come upon them?

Does God, in His anger, apportion destruction?

¹⁸ Are they like straw before the wind,

like chaff swept away by a storm?

¹⁹ It is said that God lays up one’s punishment for his children.

Let God repay the man himself, so he will know it.

²⁰ Let his eyes see his own destruction;

let him drink for himself the wrath of the Almighty.

²¹ For what does he care about his household after him,

when the number of his months has run out?

²² Can anyone teach knowledge to God,

since He judges those on high?

²³ One man dies full of vigor,

completely secure and at ease.

²⁴ His body is well nourished,^b

and his bones are rich with marrow.

²⁵ Yet another man dies in the bitterness of his soul,

having never tasted prosperity.

²⁶ But together they lie down in the dust,

and worms cover them both.

²⁷ Behold, I know your thoughts full well,

the schemes by which you would wrong me.

²⁸ For you say, ‘Where now is the nobleman’s house,

and where are the tents in which the wicked dwell?’

²⁹ Have you never asked those who travel the roads?

Do you not accept their reports?

³⁰ Indeed, the evil man is spared from the day of calamity,

delivered from the day of wrath.

³¹ Who denounces his behavior to his face?

Who repays him for what he has done?

³² He is carried to the grave,

and watch is kept over his tomb.

³³ The clods of the valley are sweet to him;

everyone follows behind him,

and those before him are without number.

³⁴ So how can you comfort me with empty words?

For your answers remain full of falsehood.”