# Job 21 
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1. Then Job answered and said: 
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2. “Keep listening to my words, and let this be your comfort. 
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3. Bear with me, and I will speak, and after I have spoken, mock on. 
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4. As for me, is my complaint against man? Why should I not be impatient? 
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5. Look at me and be appalled, and lay your hand over your mouth. 
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6. When I remember, I am dismayed, and shuddering seizes my flesh. 
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7. Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? 
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8. Their offspring are established in their presence, and their descendants before their eyes. 
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9. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them. 
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10. Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves and does not miscarry. 
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11. They send out their little boys like a flock, and their children dance. 
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12. They sing to the tambourine and the lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe. 
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13. They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol. 
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14. They say to God, ‘Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways. 
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15. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’ 
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16. Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand? The counsel of the wicked is far from me. 
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17. “How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out? That their calamity comes upon them? That God distributes pains in his anger? 
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18. That they are like straw before the wind, and like chaff that the storm carries away? 
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19. You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’ Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it. 
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20. Let their own eyes see their destruction, and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 
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21. For what do they care for their houses after them, when the number of their months is cut off? 
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22. Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those who are on high? 
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23. One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, 
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24. his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. 
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25. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. 
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26. They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them. 
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27. “Behold, I know your thoughts and your schemes to wrong me. 
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28. For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’ 
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29. Have you not asked those who travel the roads, and do you not accept their testimony 
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30. that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity, that he is rescued in the day of wrath? 
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31. Who declares his way to his face, and who repays him for what he has done? 
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32. When he is carried to the grave, watch is kept over his tomb. 
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33. The clods of the valley are sweet to him; all mankind follows after him, and those who go before him are innumerable. 
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34. How then will you comfort me with empty nothings? There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.” 

(ESV)