Family Prayer
in the Early Evening

² “Keep listening to my words,
    and let this be your comfort.
³ Bear with me, and I will speak,
    and after I have spoken, mock on.
⁴ As for me, is my complaint against man?
    Why should I not be impatient?
⁵ Look at me and be appalled,
    and lay your hand over your mouth.
⁶ When I remember, I am dismayed,
    and shuddering seizes my flesh.
⁷ Why do the wicked live,
    reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
⁸ Their offspring are established in their presence,
    and their descendants before their eyes.
⁹ Their houses are safe from fear,
    and no rod of God is upon them.
¹⁰ Their bull breeds without fail;
    their cow calves and does not miscarry.
¹¹ They send out their little boys like a flock,
    and their children dance.
¹² They sing to the tambourine and the lyre
    and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
¹³ They spend their days in prosperity,
    and in peace they go down to Sheol.
¹⁴ They say to God, ‘Depart from us!
    We do not desire the knowledge of your ways.
¹⁵ What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?
    And what profit do we get if we pray to him?’
¹⁶ Behold, 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 distributes pains in his anger?
¹⁸ That they are like straw before the wind,
    and like chaff that the storm carries away?
¹⁹ You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’
    Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.
²⁰ Let their own eyes see their destruction,
    and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.
²¹ For what do they care for their houses after them,
    when the number of their months is cut off?
²² Will any teach God knowledge,
    seeing that he judges those who are on high?
²³ One dies in his full vigor,
    being wholly at ease and secure,
²⁴ his pails full of milk
    and the marrow of his bones moist.
²⁵ Another dies in bitterness of soul,
    never having tasted of prosperity.
²⁶ They lie down alike in the dust,
    and the worms cover them.

²⁷ “Behold, I know your thoughts
    and your schemes to wrong me.
²⁸ For you say, ‘Where is the house of the prince?
    Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?’
²⁹ Have you not asked those who travel the roads,
    and do you not accept their testimony
³⁰ that the evil man is spared in the day of calamity,
    that he is rescued in the day of wrath?
³¹ Who declares his way to his face,
    and who repays him for what he has done?
³² When he is carried to the grave,
    watch is kept over his tomb.
³³ The clods of the valley are sweet to him;
    all mankind follows after him,
    and those who go before him are innumerable.
³⁴ How then will you comfort me with empty nothings?
    There is nothing left of your answers but falsehood.”