Job 21 · Clearspring

Job: God Will Punish the Wicked

¹Then 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 shall declare his way to his face? Who shall repay him what he has done?+ ³²Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men shall keep watch over the tomb.+ ³³The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him. All men shall 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?”+

Job: God Will Punish the Wicked

Study Job 21