The In-Dept Study of the Bible
Job 21
1 Then Job answered,
2 “Listen diligently to my speech.
Let this be your consolation.
3 Allow me, and I also will speak.
After I have spoken, mock on.
4 As for me, is my complaint to man?
Why shouldn’t I be impatient?
5 Look at me, and be astonished.
Lay your hand on your mouth.
6 When I remember, I am troubled.
Horror takes hold of my flesh.
7 “Why do the wicked live,
become old, yes, and grow mighty in
power?
8 Their child is established with them in
their sight, their offspring before their eyes.
9 Their houses are safe from fear,
neither is the rod of God upon them.
10 Their bulls breed without fail.
Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry.
11 They sendouttheir little ones like aflock.
Their children dance.
12 They sing to the tambourine and harp,
and rejoice at the sound of the pipe.
13 They spend their days in prosperity.
In an instant they go down to Sheol.†
14 They tell God, ‘Depart from us,
for we don’t want to know about your
ways.
15 What is the Almighty, that we should
serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray
to him?’
16 Behold, their prosperity is not in their
hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from
me.
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?
18 How often is it that they are as stubble
before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away?
19 You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his
children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that
he may know it.
20 Let his own eyes see his destruction.
Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21For what does he care for his house after
him, when the number of his months is cut
off?
22 “Shall any teach God knowledge,
since he judges those who are high?
23 One dies in his full strength,
being wholly at ease and quiet.
24 His pails are full of milk.
The marrow of his bones is moistened.
25 Another dies in bitterness of soul,
and never tastes of good.
26 They lie down alike in the dust.
The worm covers them.
27 “Behold, I know your thoughts,
the plans with which you would
wrong me.
28 For you say, ‘Where is the house of the
prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked
lived?’
29 Haven’t you asked wayfaring men?
Don’t you know their evidences,
30 that the evil man is reserved to the day
of calamity, that they are led out to the day of
wrath?
31 Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repayhim whathehas done?
32 Yet he will be borne to the grave.
Men will keep watch over the tomb.
33 The clods of the valley will be sweet to
him. All men will draw after him,
as there were innumerable before
him.
34 So how can you comfort me with nonsense,
because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”