[1] Then Job replied: [2] “Listen carefully to my words; let this be the consolation you give me. [3] Bear with me while I speak, and after I have spoken, mock on. [4] “Is my complaint directed to a human being? Why should I not be impatient? [5] Look at me and be appalled; clap your hand over your mouth. [6] When I think about this, I am terrified; trembling seizes my body. [7] Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? [8] They see their children established around them, their offspring before their eyes. [9] Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not on them. [10] Their bulls never fail to breed; their cows calve and do not miscarry. [11] They send forth their children as a flock; their little ones dance about. [12] They sing to the music of timbrel and lyre; they make merry to the sound of the pipe. [13] They spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace. [14] Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways. [15] Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?’ [16] But their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked. [17] “Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does calamity come upon them, the fate God allots in his anger? [18] How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale? [19] It is said, ‘God stores up the punishment of the wicked for their children.’ Let him repay the wicked, so that they themselves will experience it! [20] Let their own eyes see their destruction; let them drink the cup of the wrath of the Almighty. [21] For what do they care about the families they leave behind when their allotted months come to an end?
