Job Asserts the Prosperity of the Wicked

211 Then Job answered, 2 “Listen diligently to my speech.
Let this be your consolation. 3 Allow me, and I also will speak;
After I have spoken, mock on. 4 As for me, is my complaint to man?
Why shouldn’t I be impatient? 5 Look at me, and be astonished.
Lay your hand on your mouth. 6 When 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? 8 Their child is established with them in their sight,
their offspring before their eyes. 9 Their houses are safe from fear,
neither is the rod of God upon them. 10 Their bulls breed without fail.
Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry. 11 They send forth their little ones like a flock.
Their children dance. 12 They sing to the tambourine and harp,
and rejoice at the sound of the pipe. 13 They spend their days in prosperity.
In an instant they go down to Sheol. 14 They tell God, ‘Depart from us,
for we don’t want to know about your ways. 15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’ 16 Behold, 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? 18 How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind,
as chaff that the storm carries away? 19 You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’
Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it. 20 Let his own eyes see his destruction.
Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. 21 For what does he care for his house after him,
when the number of his months is cut off? 22 “Shall any teach God knowledge,
seeing he judges those who are high? 23 One dies in his full strength,
being wholly at ease and quiet. 24 His pails are full of milk.
The marrow of his bones is moistened. 25 Another dies in bitterness of soul,
and never tastes of good. 26 They lie down alike in the dust.
The worm covers them.

27 “Behold, I know your thoughts,
the devices with which you would wrong me. 28 For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’ 29 Haven’t you asked wayfaring men?
Don’t you know their evidences, 30 that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity,
That they are led forth to the day of wrath? 31 Who shall declare his way to his face?
Who shall repay him what he has done? 32 Yet he will be borne to the grave.
Men shall keep watch over the tomb. 33 The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him.
All men shall draw after him,
as there were innumerable before him. 34 So how can you comfort me with nonsense,
seeing that in your answers there remains only falsehood?”

Job Bewails His Birth

31 After this Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. 2 Job answered: 3 “Let the day perish in which I was born,
the night which said, ‘There is a boy conceived.’ 4 Let that day be darkness.
Don’t let God from above seek for it,
neither let the light shine on it. 5 Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own.
Let a cloud dwell on it.
Let all that makes black the day terrify it. 6 As for that night, let thick darkness seize on it.
Let it not rejoice among the days of the year.
Let it not come into the number of the months. 7 Behold, let that night be barren.
Let no joyful voice come therein. 8 Let them curse it who curse the day,
who are ready to rouse up leviathan. 9 Let the stars of its twilight be dark.
Let it look for light, but have none,
neither let it see the eyelids of the morning, 10 because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
nor did it hide trouble from my eyes.

11 “Why didn’t I die from the womb?
Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? 12 Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breast, that I should suck? 13 For now should I have lain down and been quiet.
I should have slept, then I would have been at rest, 14 with kings and counselors of the earth,
who built up waste places for themselves; 15 or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver: 16 or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been,
as infants who never saw light. 17 There the wicked cease from troubling.
There the weary are at rest. 18 There the prisoners are at ease together.
They don’t hear the voice of the taskmaster. 19 The small and the great are there.
The servant is free from his master.

20 “Why is light given to him who is in misery,
life to the bitter in soul, 21 Who long for death, but it doesn’t come;
and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, 22 who rejoice exceedingly,
and are glad, when they can find the grave? 23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,
whom God has hedged in? 24 For my sighing comes before I eat.
My groanings are poured out like water. 25 For the thing which I fear comes on me,
That which I am afraid of comes to me. 26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
but trouble comes.”