Job 21
1TO this Job replied:
2Hear, hear my words. Can I not have this consolation from you?
3Bear with me, and when I speak do not deride me.
4What! is my pleading with man? Or, why shall I not be inflamed with indignation?
5Look on me and be amazed, having laid your hand on your cheek.
6For at the bare recollection I shudder: and tortures rack my flesh.
7Why do the wicked live and grow old, abounding in wealth?
8Their crops are to their wish, and their children before their eyes.
9Their houses flourish and they have no dread; and a scourge from the Lord is not upon them.
10Their kine bring not forth untimely births, but go their time safely, and cast not their calves.
11They abide continually like a flock, and their little ones frolic about them.
12They take up the psaltery and kithara, and are charmed with the sound of the song;
13and having spent their life in festivity, they are composed to rest in the peaceful grave.
14Yet he saith to the Lord: Depart from me, I desire not to know Thy ways;
15what is the Almighty, that we should serve Him: and what the advantage, that we should wait on him?
16For their prosperity was by their own hands.
17Now doth not He observe the works of the wicked? and should not the lamp, at least of wicked men, be extinguished, and destruction come upon them? And [should not] pangs seize them, on account of [His] anger:
18and they be like chaff driven by the wind, or like dust swept away by a whirlwind?
19His substance should fail from among his children; He should retribute [his deserts] to him. And he should know it.
20His eyes should see his own destruction, and he should not escape from the Lord.
21Because his desire is in his family with him; therefore the number of their months should be cut short.
22Is it not the Lord Who teacheth wisdom and understanding, and doth He discriminate murderers?
23One is to die in his full strength, all his life being successful and prosperous;
24his entrails are clothed with fat, and his bones abound with marrow.
25Another dieth with bitterness of soul, having never tasted anything good.
26But they are both composed alike underground, and putrefaction hath covered them.
27I know you charge me with presumption,
28that you will say, Where is the house of the chief, and where is the covering of the tents of the wicked?
29Ask them who travel the high ways, or their monuments, you cannot miss them.
30Because the wicked is reserved for a day of destruction: let them be carried to prison for the day of His indignation.
31Who shall tell him his way to his face, and who shall retribute to him what he hath done?
32Even when he should be carried to the burying place, he had caused a watch to be kept over his tomb.
33The flints of the torrent have been sweetened for him, and every man shall go after him, as innumerable have gone before him.
34How then do ye comfort me with vanity? There is nothing from you to give me consolation.