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Job 21

Job challenges his friends’ claims about judgment by showing how the wicked can prosper and die with honor.

Job asks his friends to listen and let their silence serve as comfort. He challenges their account of how God treats the wicked: people who reject God can live long, enjoy safe homes, and watch their children flourish. Job rejects their counsel, yet insists that their prosperity must be faced. He contrasts lives of ease with lives of bitterness, both ending in the grave, and calls his friends’ answers false comfort.

injustice and angerdoubt
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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?’
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?”
World English BibleRead in NIV in Psalmlog →Highlighted verses are the most connected.
Key verses
Job 21:7This question drives Job’s argument: the long lives and growing power of wicked people challenge his friends’ explanations.
Job 21:14Job quotes the prosperous wicked rejecting God, making clear that their comfort can coexist with open defiance.
Job 21:18The image of windblown chaff appears within Job’s question about how often the wicked suffer visible ruin.
Where this chapter reaches

Psalm shares Job’s question about the prosperity of the wicked and his image of chaff driven by wind. Proverbs also uses the image of an extinguished lamp for the wicked, while Job questions how often such judgment can be seen.

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Notice

After reading the whole chapter

Which detail in Job’s account of the wicked most challenges your expectations about God’s justice?

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What does Job’s request for listening reveal about the kind of comfort you seek or offer?

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Questions people ask about Job 21

Why do the wicked prosper in Job 21?

Job raises that question without receiving an explanation in this speech. He describes wicked people whose families thrive and whose homes remain safe, challenging his friends’ claim that wickedness brings visible ruin. He still acknowledges God as judge, while refusing to treat present circumstances as a reliable measure of someone’s character.

Is Job rejecting God in Job 21:14?

The words “Depart from us” belong to the wicked people Job is describing. He quotes their refusal to know God’s ways and their doubt that prayer has value. In verse 16, Job distances himself from their counsel. His argument concerns their prosperity despite their rejection of God.

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What the Bible says about anger →What the Bible says about doubt →

Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).