Job 21:7–18

⁷Why do the wicked live,

reach old age, and grow mighty in power?

⁸Their children are established in their presence,

and their offspring before their eyes.

⁹Their houses are safe from fear,

and no rod of God is upon them.

¹⁰Their bull breeds without fail;

their cow calves, and does not cast her calf.

¹¹They send forth their little ones like a flock,

and their children dance.

¹²They sing to the tambourine and the lyre,

and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.

¹³They spend their days in prosperity,

and in peace they go down to Sheol.

¹⁴They say to God, ‘Depart from us!

We do not desire the knowledge of thy ways.

¹⁵What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?

And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’

¹⁶Behold, 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^c distributes pains in his anger?

¹⁸That they are like straw before the wind,

and like chaff that the storm carries away?