¹Then Job answered, ²“Listen diligently to my speech. Let this be your consolation. ³Allow me, and I also will speak. After I have spoken, mock on. ⁴As for me, is my complaint to man? Why shouldn’t I be impatient? ⁵Look at me, and be astonished. Lay your hand on your mouth. ⁶When 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? ⁸Their child is established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes. ⁹Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. ¹⁰Their bulls breed without fail. Their cows calve, and don’t miscarry. ¹¹They send out their little ones like a flock. Their children dance. ¹²They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the pipe. ¹³They spend their days in prosperity. In an instant they go down to Sheol. ¹⁴They tell God, ‘Depart from us, for we don’t want to know about your ways. ¹⁵What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?’ ¹⁶Behold, 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? ¹⁸How often is it that they are as stubble before the wind, as chaff that the storm carries away? ¹⁹You say, ‘God lays up his iniquity for his children.’ Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it. ²⁰Let his own eyes see his destruction. Let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. ²¹For what does he care for his house after him, when the number of his months is cut off? ²²“Shall any teach God knowledge, since he judges those who are high? ²³One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. ²⁴His pails are full of milk. The marrow of his bones is moistened. ²⁵Another dies in bitterness of soul, and never tastes of good. ²⁶They lie down alike in the dust. The worm covers them. ²⁷“Behold, I know your thoughts, the plans with which you would wrong me. ²⁸For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’ ²⁹Haven’t you asked wayfaring men? Don’t you know their evidences, ³⁰that the evil man is reserved to the day of calamity, that they are led out to the day of wrath? ³¹Who will declare his way to his face? Who will repay him what he has done? ³²Yet he will be borne to the grave. Men will keep watch over the tomb. ³³The clods of the valley will be sweet to him. All men will draw after him, as there were innumerable before him. ³⁴So how can you comfort me with nonsense, because in your answers there remains only falsehood?”