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 forth 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 *Sheol is the place of the dead..

• 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 devices 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 forth 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?”