Study Desk

"Is my complaint directed to man? Why should I not be impatient?

Look at me and be astonished; clap your hand over your mouth.

When I think about this, I am terrified; trembling seizes my body.

Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?

They see their children established around them, their offspring before their eyes.

Their homes are safe and free from fear; the rod of God is not upon them.

Their bulls never fail to breed; their cows calve and do not miscarry.

They send forth their children as a flock; their little ones dance about.

They sing to the music of tambourine and harp; they make merry to the sound of the flute.

They spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave ^(F43) in peace. ^(F44)

Yet they say to God, 'Leave us alone! We have no desire to know your ways.

Who is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?'

But their prosperity is not in their own hands, so I stand aloof from the counsel of the wicked.

"Yet how often is the lamp of the wicked snuffed out? How often does calamity come upon them, the fate God allots in his anger?

How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale?