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Job Replies: The Wicked Do Prosper
Chapter 21
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Then Job answered and said:
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"Keep listening to my words, and let this be your comfort.
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Bear with me, and I will speak, and after I have spoken, mock on.
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As for me, is my complaint against man? Why should I not be impatient?
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Look at me and be appalled, and lay your hand over your mouth.
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When I remember, I am dismayed, and shuddering seizes my flesh.
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Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
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Their offspring are established in their presence, and their descendants before their eyes.
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Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.
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Their bull breeds without fail; their cow calves and does not miscarry.
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They send out their little boys like a flock, and their children dance.
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They sing to the tambourine and the lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
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They spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol.
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They say to God, 'Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
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What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?'
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Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand? The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
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"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?
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That they are like straw before the wind, and like chaff that the storm carries away?
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You say, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children.' Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
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Let their own eyes see their destruction, and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
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For what do they care for their houses after them, when the number of their months is cut off?
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Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those who are on high?
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One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure,
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his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist.
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Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity.
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They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.
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"Behold, I know your thoughts and your schemes to wrong me.
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For you say, 'Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?'
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Have you not asked those who travel the roads, and do you not accept their testimony
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that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity, that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
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Who declares his way to his face, and who repays him for what he has done?
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When he is carried to the grave, watch is kept over his tomb.
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The clods of the valley are sweet to him; all mankind follows after him, and those who go before him are innumerable.
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How then will you comfort me with empty nothings? There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood."