Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper
Then Job answered and said:
2 a“Keep listening to my words,
and let this be your comfort.
3 Bear with me, and I will speak,
and after I have spoken, amock on.
4 As for me, is my acomplaint against man?
Why should I not be impatient?
5 Look at me and be appalled,
and alay your hand over your mouth.
6 When I remember, I am dismayed,
and shuddering seizes my flesh.
7 aWhy do the wicked live,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
8 Their aoffspring are established in their presence,
and their descendants before their eyes.
9 Their houses are asafe from fear,
and bno rod of God is upon them.
10 Their bull breeds without fail;
their cow calves and adoes not miscarry.
11 They send out their alittle boys like a flock,
and their children dance.
12 They sing to athe tambourine and bthe lyre
and rejoice to the sound of bthe pipe.
13 They aspend their days in prosperity,
and in bpeace they go down to cSheol.
14 They say to God, a‘Depart from us!
We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
15 aWhat is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
And what bprofit do we get if we pray to him?’
16 Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
aThe counsel of the wicked is far from me.
17 “How often is it that athe lamp of the wicked is put out?
That their calamity comes upon them?
That God distributes pains in his anger?
18 That they are like astraw before the wind,
and like bchaff that the storm carries away?
19 You say, ‘God astores up their iniquity for their bchildren.’
Let him pay it out to them, that they may cknow it.
20 Let their own eyes see their destruction,
and let them adrink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 For what do they care for their houses after them,
when athe number of their months is cut off?
22 aWill any teach God knowledge,
seeing that he bjudges those who are on high?
23 One dies in his full vigor,
being wholly at ease and secure,
24 his pails full of milk
and athe marrow of his bones moist.
25 Another dies in abitterness of soul,
never having tasted of prosperity.
26 They alie down alike in the dust,
and bthe worms cover them.
27 “Behold, I know your thoughts
and your schemes to wrong me.
28 For you say, a‘Where is the house of the prince?
Where is bthe tent in which the wicked lived?’
29 Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
and do you not accept their testimony
30 that athe evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
31 Who declares his way ato his face,
and who brepays him for what he has done?
32 When he is acarried to the grave,
watch is kept over his tomb.
33 aThe clods of the valley are sweet to him;
ball mankind follows after him,
and those who go before him are innumerable.
34 How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”