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.1
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,2 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.”