“Is my complaint directed to man? Why should I not be impatient?
Look at me and be astonished; clap your hand over your mouth.
When I think about this, I am terrified; trembling seizes my body.
Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?
They see their children established around them, their offspring before their
eyes. Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not upon them.
Their bulls never fail to breed; their cows calve and do not miscarry.
They send forth their children as a flock; their little ones dance about. They sing
to the music of tambourine and harp; they make merry to the sound of the flute. They
spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace.
Yet they say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways.
Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
What would we gain by praying to him?’
But their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the counsel of
the wicked. “Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does
calamity come upon them, the fate God allots in his anger?
How often are they like
straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale? It is said, ‘God stores up a man’s
punishment for his sons.’ Let him repay the man himself, so that he will know it!
Let his own eyes see his destruction; let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
For what does he care about the family he leaves behind
when his allotted months come to an end?
Job 21: 4-21