Job 21 :: English Standard Version (ESV)

Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper

Job 21:1

Job 21:1Then Job answered and said:

Job 21:2

Job 21:2“Keep listening to my words,
and let this be your comfort.

Job 21:3

Job 21:3Bear with me, and I will speak,
and after I have spoken, mock on.

Job 21:4

Job 21:4As for me, is my complaint against man?
Why should I not be impatient?

Job 21:5

Job 21:5Look at me and be appalled,
and lay your hand over your mouth.

Job 21:6

Job 21:6When I remember, I am dismayed,
and shuddering seizes my flesh.

Job 21:7

Job 21:7Why do the wicked live,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

Job 21:8

Job 21:8Their offspring are established in their presence,
and their descendants before their eyes.

Job 21:9

Job 21:9Their houses are safe from fear,
and no rod of God is upon them.

Job 21:10

Job 21:10Their bull breeds without fail;
their cow calves and does not miscarry.

Job 21:11

Job 21:11They send out their little boys like a flock,
and their children dance.

Job 21:12

Job 21:12They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

Job 21:13

Job 21:13They spend their days in prosperity,
and in peace they go down to Sheol.

Job 21:14

Job 21:14They say to God, ‘Depart from us!
We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.

Job 21:15

Job 21:15What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’

Job 21:16

Job 21:16Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand?
The counsel of the wicked is far from me.

Job 21:17

Job 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?

Job 21:18

Job 21:18That they are like straw before the wind,
and like chaff that the storm carries away?

Job 21:19

Job 21:19You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.

Job 21:20

Job 21:20Let their own eyes see their destruction,
and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.

Job 21:21

Job 21:21For what do they care for their houses after them,
when the number of their months is cut off?

Job 21:22

Job 21:22Will any teach God knowledge,
seeing that he judges those who are on high?

Job 21:23

Job 21:23One dies in his full vigor,
being wholly at ease and secure,

Job 21:24

Job 21:24his pails[fn] full of milk
and the marrow of his bones moist.

Job 21:25

Job 21:25Another dies in bitterness of soul,
never having tasted of prosperity.

Job 21:26

Job 21:26They lie down alike in the dust,
and the worms cover them.

Job 21:27

Job 21:27“Behold, I know your thoughts
and your schemes to wrong me.

Job 21:28

Job 21:28For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’

Job 21:29

Job 21:29Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
and do you not accept their testimony

Job 21:30

Job 21:30that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
that he is rescued in the day of wrath?

Job 21:31

Job 21:31Who declares his way to his face,
and who repays him for what he has done?

Job 21:32

Job 21:32When he is carried to the grave,
watch is kept over his tomb.

Job 21:33

Job 21:33The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
all mankind follows after him,
and those who go before him are innumerable.

Job 21:34

Job 21:34How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”

See the ESV Preface (Especially for Parenthesis, Brackets, & Asterisks).

ESV Footnotes

(21:17)

Hebrew he

(21:24)

The meaning of the Hebrew word is uncertain

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