Job 21

Thomson(i) 1 To this Job replied, 2 hear, hear my words. Can I not have this consolation from you? 3 Bear with me, and when I speak do not deride me. 4 What! is my pleading with man? Or, why shall I not be inflamed with indignation? 5 Look on me and be amazed, having laid your hand on your cheek. 6 For at the bare recollection I shudder: and tortures rack my flesh. 7 Why do the wicked live and grow old, abounding in wealth? 8 Their crops are to their wish, and their children before their eyes. 9 Their houses flourish and they have no dread; and a scourge from the Lord is not upon them. 10 Their kine bring not forth untimely births, but go their time safely, and cast not their calves. 11 They abide continually like a flock, and their little ones frolick about them. 12 They take up the psaltery and kithara, and are charmed with the sound of the song; 13 and having spent their life in festivity, they are composed to rest in the peaceful grave. 14 Yet he saith to the Lord, Depart from me, I desire not to know thy ways. 15 What is the Almighty, that we should serve him: and what the advantage, that we should wait on him? 16 For their prosperity was by their own hands. 17 Now doth not he observe the works of the wicked? and should not the lamp, at least of wicked men, be extinguished, and destruction come upon them? And pangs seize them, on account of anger: 18 and they be like chaff driven by the wind, or like dust swept away by a whirlwind? 19 His substance should fail from among his children. He should retribute to him. And he should know it. 20 His eyes should see his own destruction: and he should not escape from the Lord. 21 Because his desire is in his family with him; therefore the number of their months should be cut short. 22 Is it not the Lord who teacheth wisdom and understanding, and doth he discriminate murderers? 23 One is to die in his full strength, all his life being successful and prosperous; 24 his entrails are cloathed with fat, and his bones abound with marrow. 25 Another dieth with bitterness of soul, having never tasted any thing good. 26 But they are both composed alike under ground, and putrefaction hath covered them. 27 I know you charge me with presumption, 28 that you will say, Where is the house of the chief, and where is the covering of the tents of the wicked? 29 Ask them who travel the high ways, or their monuments, you cannot miss them. 30 Because the wicked is reserved for a day of destruction: let them be carried to prison for the day of his indignation. 31 Who shall tell him his way to his face, and who shall retribute to him what he hath done? 32 Even when he should be carried to the burying place, he had caused a watch to be kept over his tomb. 33 The flints of the torrent have been sweetened for him, and every man shall go after him, as innumerable have gone before him. 34 How then do ye comfort me with vanity? There is nothing from you to give me consolation.