3.1 KiB
Job's Seventh Speech: A Response to Zophar
Chapter 21
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Then Job spoke again:
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"Listen closely to what I am saying.
That's one consolation you can give me.
- Bear with me, and let me speak.
After I have spoken, you may resume mocking me.
- "My complaint is with God, not with people.
I have good reason to be so impatient.
- Look at me and be stunned.
Put your hand over your mouth in shock.
- When I think about what I am saying, I shudder.
My body trembles.
- "Why do the wicked prosper,
growing old and powerful?
- They live to see their children grow up and settle down,
and they enjoy their grandchildren.
- Their homes are safe from every fear,
and God does not punish them.
- Their bulls never fail to breed.
Their cows bear calves and never miscarry.
- They let their children frisk about like lambs.
Their little ones skip and dance.
- They sing with tambourine and harp.
They celebrate to the sound of the flute.
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They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to the grave in peace.
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And yet they say to God, 'Go away.
We want no part of you and your ways.
- Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him?
What good will it do us to pray?'
- (They think their prosperity is of their own doing,
but I will have nothing to do with that kind of thinking.)
- "Yet the light of the wicked never seems to be extinguished.
Do they ever have trouble?
Does God distribute sorrows to them in anger?
- Are they driven before the wind like straw?
Are they carried away by the storm like chaff?
Not at all!
- "'Well,' you say, 'at least God will punish their children!'
But I say he should punish the ones who sin,
so that they understand his judgment.
- Let them see their destruction with their own eyes.
Let them drink deeply of the anger of the Almighty.
- For they will not care what happens to their family
after they are dead.
- "But who can teach a lesson to God,
since he judges even the most powerful?
- One person dies in prosperity,
completely comfortable and secure,
- the picture of good health,
vigorous and fit.
- Another person dies in bitter poverty,
never having tasted the good life.
- But both are buried in the same dust,
both eaten by the same maggots.
- "Look, I know what you're thinking.
I know the schemes you plot against me.
- You will tell me of rich and wicked people
whose houses have vanished because of their sins.
- But ask those who have been around,
and they will tell you the truth.
- Evil people are spared in times of calamity
and are allowed to escape disaster.
- No one criticizes them openly
or pays them back for what they have done.
- When they are carried to the grave,
an honor guard keeps watch at their tomb.
- A great funeral procession goes to the cemetery.
Many pay their respects as the body is laid to rest,
and the earth gives sweet repose.
- "How can your empty clich<63>s comfort me?
All your explanations are lies!"