✧Then Job answered, ✧2“Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation. ✧3Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on. ✧4As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient? ✧5Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth. ✧6When I remember, I am troubled. Horror takes hold of my flesh. ✧7“Why do the wicked live, become old, yes, and grow mighty in power? ✧8Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes. ✧9Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. ✧10Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry. ✧11They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance. ✧12They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe. ✧13They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol. ✧14They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways. ✧15What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’ ✧16Behold, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me. ✧17“How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out, that their calamity comes on them, that God distributes sorrows in his anger? ✧18How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away? ✧19You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it. ✧20Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. ✧21For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off? ✧22“Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high? ✧23One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. ✧24His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened. ✧25Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good. ✧26They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them. ✧27“Behold, I know your thoughts, the plans with which you would wrong me. ✧28For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’ ✧29Haven’t you asked wayfaring men? Don’t you know their evidences, ✧30that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the day of wrath? ✧31Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repay him what he has done? ✧32Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb. ✧33The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him. ✧34So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”