Job speaks:
Listen to me carefully if only for a short time.
Listen for a moment and then you can go back to making fun of me if you wish.
Am I aiming my complaints toward you?
Go ahead and look at me like you can't believe that I would say this...
But the wicked don't always suffer on this earth!
Sometimes they grow old and increase in wealth and power!
Their reputations grow in stature!
Their households prosper!
they don't live in fear!
God does not send calamity upon them!
Their livelihood is profitable.
They sing and dance!
They die after having lived a long peaceful life!
They don't care about God.
They don't want to learn what He wants them to do!
They don't respect Him.
They don't pray to Him.
Even so, I know that they are not the ones that give themselves these blessings that they enjoy.
I don't understand it but I know that God is still in control.
And so I do not follow them and I do not do the things that they do.
How often do the wicked suffer calamity?
how often are the actually destroyed?
People say that God is saving up the punishment for his sons and grandsons.
But why should he care what happens after he is dead and gone?
Nobody can teach God anything. He knows all things and judges all things.
One man faces even his final days with energy, in relaxed security.
He is healthy and comfortable.
Another man dies in bitterness, never having had anything good in this life.
His mind and his heart are in pain.
They both lie in the ground.
Both of them die and are buried.
I know what you are thinking...
You wonder who I am to talk - since I myself have no house.
Yousay I am wicked and that is why God has taken it away from me!
But haven't you ever listened to what people say?
Look beyond the area in which you live and see if what you claim to be true in fact really happens or not!
Doesn't what you find there agree with what I am saying?
Isn't it a fact that evil men don't always get repaid in this life?
They don't suffer terrible harm for their wrong deeds?
They have a respectable funeral when they die.
Calamity does not devour them and their households!
Since this is the case, how can your words make me feel better?
Nothing is left of you answers but falsehood. They are no help to me.
Next Chapter begins a new section! - Job and his "friends" speak the 3rd (and final) time around
Back to Contents Page
Back to Magazine Cover