Job 21:4-18
International Standard Version
4 After all, isn’t my complaint against a human being?
If so, why shouldn’t I be impatient?
5 Look at me, be appalled,
and then shut up!
6 When I think about this,[a] I’m petrified with terror
and my body shudders uncontrollably.”
The Wicked Prospers
7 “Why do the wicked live to reach old age
and increase in power and wealth, too?
8 Their children grow up while they’re alive,
and they live to see their grandchildren.
9 Their houses are safe from fear,
and God’s chastisement[b] never visits them.
10 Their bull breeds without fail,
and their cows calve without miscarriages.
11 They release their children to play like sheep;
their young ones[c] dance about,
12 singing[d] with tambourines and lyres
as they rejoice to the sound of flutes.
13 They grow old[e] in prosperity,
as they descend peacefully into the afterlife.[f]
14 “They say to God, ‘Turn away from us!
We have no desire to know your ways.
15 Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
Where’s the profit in talking to him?’
16 Behold! Their prosperity isn’t in their control!
The counsel of the wicked will remain far from me.”
God will Punish the Wicked
17 “How often do the wicked have their lights put out?
Does calamity ever fall on them?
Will God[g] in his anger ever apportion their destruction?
18 May they become like a straw,
blown away before the wind;
like a chaff that’s swept off by a storm.
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