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Job 21 :: English Standard Version (ESV)

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Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper

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

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Books and Bibles, a Publishing Ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

See detailed copyright information.

For more information on this translation, see the ESV Preface.

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