Those who do evil prosper.
The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly. Job 12:6 When I saw the prosperity of the wicked .... They have more than heart could wish .... Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. Psalm 73:3-7, 12 Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously. Jeremiah 12:1
Cited passages
The tents of robbers prosper. Those who provoke God are secure, who carry their god in their hands.
For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no struggles in their death, but their strength is firm. They are free from burdens of men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore pride is like a chain around their neck. Violence covers them like a garment. Their eyes bulge with fat. Their minds pass the limits of conceit. Behold, these are the wicked. Being always at ease, they increase in riches.
You are righteous, Yahweh, when I contend with you; yet I would like to reason the cause with you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are they all at ease who deal very treacherously?
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Genuinely disputed among scholars
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is the empirical face of the retribution problem: not whether the wicked ought to suffer, but whether they in fact prosper. The Hebrew Bible repeatedly notices that they do. Job 12:6 states flatly that 'the tents of robbers are at peace (yišlāyû), and those who provoke God are secure.' Psalm 73 develops the observation at length — the wicked are 'not in trouble as others,' wear pride as a necklace, and 'increase in riches' (73:5, 6, 12). Jeremiah 12:1 turns it into a direct accusation: 'Why does the way of the wicked prosper (ṣālēḥâ)? Why are all who deal treacherously at ease?' Against these, Psalm 34:21 asserts the doctrinal counter-claim: 'Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous shall be condemned.' The underlying scheme is the act-consequence nexus (the Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang of German scholarship), in which a deed carries its own outcome — a framework these texts variously affirm and contest.
The standard harmonization is a temporal one: the wicked prosper now but will be desolate later, whether through eventual reversal in this life or final judgment. Kidner's Tyndale commentary on Psalms argues this, and for some texts it is exactly right. Psalm 73 supplies its own long-term resolution: the psalmist's vertigo lifts only when he enters the sanctuary and perceives the wicked's 'end' (ʾaḥărît) — set in slippery places, swept to ruin in a moment (73:17-20). Read whole, Psalm 73 is itself an argument that present prosperity is provisional, and it harmonizes cleanly with Psalm 34:21's long-horizon claim. Brown's reading of the Psalter and Dahood's Anchor Bible commentary both note this internal movement from complaint to resolution. To this extent the harmonization is sound, and one should grant it.
It fails, however, for the texts that supply no such corrective. Job 12:6 is a bare empirical claim embedded in Job's rebuttal of the friends, and the book of Job pointedly refuses to resolve the suffering problem by appeal to an afterlife — early Israelite theology had no developed doctrine of post-mortem judgment, Sheol being the common destination of righteous and wicked alike (cf. Job 3:17-19; Ecclesiastes 9:2-3). Clines stresses that Job's complaint stands unanswered on its own terms. Jeremiah 12:1 is even more resistant: the prophet demands an accounting, and the divine reply in Jeremiah 12:5 ('If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?') does not promise the wicked's downfall but warns Jeremiah that conditions will worsen. Lundbom's Anchor Bible commentary observes that God simply declines to vindicate the retribution premise. There is no deferred-justice corrective in the passage to harmonize with Psalm 34:21.
The critical conclusion, consistent with Crenshaw's survey of the wisdom crisis and Newsom's study of Job, is that Israelite religion worked through a long confrontation with the empirical failure of strict retribution and produced several coexisting responses: some texts hold the doctrine (Psalm 34); some abandon it and concede the wicked prosper without remedy (Job 12; Jeremiah 12); and some defer the resolution to the end of life or the eschaton (Psalm 73, later apocalyptic). The temporal harmonization succeeds precisely where a text signals deferred justice and fails precisely where it does not.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable — genuinely reconciled for Psalm 73, but a real and unresolved tension for Job 12:6 and Jeremiah 12:1, reflecting a canon that preserves competing answers rather than one doctrine.
Sources for this reading