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