As for me, is my complaint(A) against a man?
Then why shouldn’t I be impatient?
Look at me and shudder;(B)
put your hand over your mouth.(C)
When I think about it, I am terrified
and my body trembles(D) in horror.
Why do the wicked continue to live,
growing old and becoming powerful?
Their children are established while they are still alive,[a]
and their descendants, before their eyes.
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?

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Footnotes

  1. Job 21:8 Lit established before them with them
  2. Job 21:13 Alt Hb tradition reads fully enjoy
  3. Job 21:17 Lit their disaster

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