Job15

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered,

²“Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind?

³Should he reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches with which he can do no good?

⁴Yes, you do away with fear, and hinder devotion before God.

⁵For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty.

⁶Your own mouth condemns you, and not I. Yes, your own lips testify against you.

⁷“Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought out before the hills?

⁸Have you heard the secret counsel of God? Do you limit wisdom to yourself?

⁹What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand which is not in us?

¹⁰With us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men, much older than your father.

¹¹Are the consolations of God too small for you, even the word that is gentle toward you?

¹²Why does your heart carry you away? Why do your eyes flash,

¹³that you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?

¹⁴What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?

¹⁵Behold, he puts no trust in his holy ones. Yes, the heavens are not clean in his sight;

¹⁶how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water!

¹⁷“I will show you, listen to me; that which I have seen I will declare

¹⁸(which wise men have told by their fathers, and have not hidden it;

¹⁹to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them):

²⁰the wicked man writhes in pain all his days, even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor.

²¹A sound of terrors is in his ears. In prosperity the destroyer will come on him.

²²He doesn’t believe that he will return out of darkness. He is waited for by the sword.

²³He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that the day of darkness is ready at his hand.

²⁴Distress and anguish make him afraid. They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle.

²⁵Because he has stretched out his hand against God, and behaves himself proudly against the Almighty,

²⁶he runs at him with a stiff neck, with the thick shields of his bucklers,

²⁷because he has covered his face with his fatness, and gathered fat on his thighs.

²⁸He has lived in desolate cities, in houses which no one inhabited, which were ready to become heaps.

²⁹He will not be rich, neither will his substance continue, neither will their possessions be extended on the earth.

³⁰He will not depart out of darkness. The flame will dry up his branches. He will go away by the breath of God’s mouth.

³¹Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his reward.

³²It will be accomplished before his time. His branch will not be green.

³³He will shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and will cast off his flower as the olive tree.

³⁴For the company of the godless will be barren, and fire will consume the tents of bribery.

³⁵They conceive mischief and produce iniquity. Their heart prepares deceit.”