Job 15

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:

²“Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge,
and fill his belly with the east wind?

³Should he argue in unprofitable talk,
or in words with which he can do no good?

⁴But you are doing away with the fear of God
and hindering meditation before God.

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

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

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

⁸Have you listened in the council of God?
And do you limit wisdom to yourself?

⁹ What do you know that we do not know?
What do you understand that is not clear to us?

¹⁰ Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us,
older than your father.

¹¹Are the comforts of God too small for you,
or the word that deals gently with you?

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

¹³that you turn your spirit against God
and bring such words out of your mouth?

¹⁴ What is man, that he can be pure?
Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?

¹⁵Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones,
and the heavens are not pure in his sight;

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

¹⁷“I will show you; hear me,
and what I have seen I will declare

¹⁸(what wise men have told,
without hiding it from their fathers,

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

²⁰The wicked man writhes in pain all his days,
through all the years that are laid up for the ruthless.

²¹ Dreadful sounds are in his ears;
in prosperity the destroyer will come upon him.

²²He does not believe that he will return out of darkness,
and he is marked for the sword.

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

²⁴distress and anguish terrify him;
they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle.

²⁵Because he has stretched out his hand against God
and defies the Almighty,

²⁶ running stubbornly against him
with a thickly bossed shield;

²⁷because he has covered his face with his fat
and gathered fat upon his waist

²⁸and has lived in desolate cities,
in houses that none should inhabit,
which were ready to become heaps of ruins;

²⁹he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure,
nor will his possessions spread over the earth;

³⁰he will not depart from darkness;
the flame will dry up his shoots,
and by the breath of his mouth he will depart.

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

³²It will be paid in full before his time,
and his branch will not be green.

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

³⁴For the company of the godless is barren,
and fire consumes the tents of bribery.

³⁵They conceive trouble and give birth to evil,
and their womb prepares deceit.”

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