✧1Then Job answered: ✧2“Listen carefully to my words; let this be your consolation to me. ✧3Bear with me while I speak; then, after I have spoken, you may go on mocking. ✧4Is my complaint against a man? Then why should I not be impatient? ✧5Look at me and be appalled; put your hand over your mouth. ✧6When I remember, terror takes hold, and my body trembles in horror. ✧7Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? ✧8Their descendants are established around them, and their offspring before their eyes. ✧9Their homes are safe from fear; no rod of punishment from God is upon them. ✧10Their bulls breed without fail; their cows bear calves and do not miscarry.
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✧11They send forth their little ones like a flock; their children skip about,
✧12singing to the tambourine and lyre and making merry at the sound of the flute.
✧13They spend their days in prosperity and go down to Sheol in peace.
✧14Yet they say to God: ‘Leave us alone! For we have no desire to know Your ways.
✧15Who is the Almighty, that we should serve Him, and what would we gain if we pray to Him?’
✧16Still, their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stay far from the counsel of the wicked.
✧17How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? Does disaster come upon them? Does God, in His anger, apportion destruction?
✧18Are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a storm?
✧19It is said that God lays up one’s punishment for his children. Let God repay the man himself, so he will know it.
✧20Let his eyes see his own destruction; let him drink for himself the wrath of the Almighty.
✧21For what does he care about his household after him, when the number of his months has run out?
✧22Can anyone teach knowledge to God, since He judges those on high?
✧23One man dies full of vigor, completely secure and at ease.
✧24His body is well nourished, and his bones are rich with marrow.
✧25Yet another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, having never tasted prosperity.
✧26But together they lie down in the dust, and worms cover them both.
✧27Behold, I know your thoughts full well, the schemes by which you would wrong me.
✧28For you say, ‘Where now is the nobleman’s house, and where are the tents in which the wicked dwell?’
✧29Have you never asked those who travel the roads? Do you not accept their reports?
✧30Indeed, the evil man is spared from the day of calamity, delivered from the day of wrath.
✧31Who denounces his behavior to his face? Who repays him for what he has done?
✧32He is carried to the grave, and watch is kept over his tomb.
✧33The clods of the valley are sweet to him; everyone follows behind him, and those before him are without number.
✧34So how can you comfort me with empty words? For your answers remain full of falsehood.”