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.^[a]
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?

²² “Can anyone teach knowledge to God,
    since he judges even the highest?
²³ One person dies in full vigor,
    completely secure and at ease,
²⁴ well nourished in body,^[b]
    bones rich with marrow.
²⁵ Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having enjoyed anything good.
²⁶ Side by side they lie in the dust,
    and worms cover them both.

²⁷ “I know full well what you are thinking,
    the schemes by which you would wrong me.
²⁸ You say, ‘Where now is the house of the great,
    the tents where the wicked lived?’
²⁹ Have you never questioned those who travel?
    Have you paid no regard to their accounts—
³⁰ that the wicked are spared from the day of calamity,
    that they are delivered from^[c] the day of wrath?
³¹ Who denounces their conduct to their face?
    Who repays them for what they have done?
³² They are carried to the grave,
    and watch is kept over their tombs.
³³ The soil in the valley is sweet to them;
    everyone follows after them,
    and a countless throng goes^[d] before them.

³⁴ “So how can you console me with your nonsense?
    Nothing is left of your answers but falsehood!”

³ For the Lord is the great God,
    the great King above all gods.
⁴ In his hand are the depths of the earth,
    and the mountain peaks belong to him.
⁵ The sea is his, for he made it,
    and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶ Come, let us bow down in worship,
    let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
⁷ for he is our God
    and we are the people of his pasture,
    the flock under his care.

Today, if only you would hear his voice,
⁸ “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,^[a]
    as you did that day at Massah^[b] in the wilderness,
⁹ where your ancestors tested me;
    they tried me, though they had seen what I did.
¹⁰ For forty years I was angry with that generation;
    I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
    and they have not known my ways.’
¹¹ So I declared on oath in my anger,
    ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”