Job 21:1-21

Christian Standard Bible

⁴ As for me, is my complaint^(A) against a human being?
Then why shouldn’t I be impatient?
⁵ Look at me and shudder;^(B)
put your hand over your mouth.^(C)
6 When I think about it, I am terrified
and my body trembles^(D) in horror.
⁷ Why do the wicked continue to live,
growing old and becoming powerful?
⁸ Their children are established while they are still alive,^[a]
and their descendants, before their eyes.
⁹ Their homes are secure and free of fear;^(E)
no rod from God strikes them.^(F)
10 Their bulls breed without fail;
their cows calve and do not miscarry.
¹¹ They let their little ones run around like lambs;
their children skip about,
¹² singing to the tambourine and lyre
and rejoicing at the sound of the flute.^(G)
13 They spend^[b] their days in prosperity^(H)
and go down to Sheol in peace.
¹⁴ Yet they say to God, “Leave us alone!
We don’t want to know your ways.^(I)
15 Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him,
and what will we gain by pleading with him?” ^(J)
16 But their prosperity is not of their own doing.
The counsel of the wicked is far from me!^(K)

¹⁷ How often is the lamp^(L) of the wicked put out?
Does disaster^[c] come on them?
Does he apportion destruction in his anger?
¹⁸ Are they like straw before the wind,
like chaff^(M) a storm sweeps away?
¹⁹ God reserves a person’s punishment for his children.^(N)
Let God repay the person himself, so that he may know it.
²⁰ Let his own eyes see his demise;
let him drink from the Almighty’s wrath!^(O)
21 For what does he care about his family once he is dead,^(P)
when the number of his months has run out?^(Q)