English Standard Version

Job 21:4-17 English Standard Version (ESV)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12. They sing to the tambourine and the lyreand rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

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

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

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

16. Behold, is not their prosperity 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 upon them?That God distributes pains in his anger?