Job’s reply
21
✭But Job answered and said, 2 📚“Listen carefully to my words, and let this be the consolation you give. 3 📚Bear with me so that I can speak; and after I have spoken, mock on. 4 📚✭“As for me, is my complaint to man? And if it were, why should I not be impatient? 5 📚Look at me and be astonished, and lay your hand over your mouth. 6 📚Even as I remember I am afraid, and trembling seizes my body. 7 📚Why do the wicked live on, becoming old; yes, becoming mighty in power? 8 📚Their children are established in their sight, with them, and their offspring before their eyes. 9 📚Their houses are safe from fear, and the rod of God does not come on them.
10 📚Their bull does not fail to breed; their cow has its calves without miscarriage.
11 📚They send out their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.
12 📚They take the tambourine and harp and rejoice at the sound of the flute✭.
13 📚They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave✭.
14 📚Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us, for we do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
15 📚Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we have if we pray to him?’
16 📚See, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
17 📚“How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their destruction come upon them, the sorrows God distributes in his anger?
18 📚How often are they like straws before the wind, and like chaff that a storm carries away?
19 📚It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of a man’s iniquity for his children.’ Let him repay him, so that he will know it.
20 📚Let his eyes see his destruction, and let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
21 📚For what care does he have about his household after him, when in the number of his months he is cut off?
22 📚“Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since he judges those on high?
23 📚One dies in his full strength, being completely at ease and quiet.
24 📚His chest✭ bulges with fat, and the marrow of his bones is moist.
25 📚Another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, never having eaten with pleasure.
26 📚They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.
27 📚“Look, I know your thoughts, and the schemes by which you would wrong me.
28 📚For you say, ‘Where is the house of the nobleman, and where is the tent where the wicked lived?’
29 📚Have you not asked travelers on the way? Do you not understand the indications they give?
30 📚For the wicked are reserved for the day of destruction. They will be brought out on the day of wrath✭.
31 📚Who declares his ways to his face? And who repays him for what he has done?
32 📚Yet he will be brought to the grave, and will remain in the tomb.
33 📚The clods of the valley will be pleasant to him. Everyone will follow him, just as innumerable ones have gone before him✭.
34 📚How then can you comfort me with vain words, since your answers contain falsehood?”