Job 15

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¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,

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

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

⁴Indeed, you diminish respect for God; you obstruct devotion to him,

⁵for your iniquity teaches your mouth; you choose to have the tongue of a crafty man.

⁶Your own mouth condemns you, not mine; indeed, your own lips testify against you.

⁷Are you the first man that was born? Were you brought into existence before the hills?

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

⁹What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not also in us?

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

¹¹Are the consolations of God too small for you, the words that are gentle toward you?

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

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

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

¹⁵See, God puts no trust even in his holy ones; indeed, the heavens are not clean in his sight;

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

¹⁷I will show you; listen to me; I will announce to you the things I have seen,

¹⁸the things that wise men have passed down from their fathers, the things that their ancestors did not hide.

¹⁹These were their ancestors, to whom alone the land was given, and among whom no stranger ever passed.

²⁰The wicked man twists in pain all his days, the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor to suffer.

²¹A sound of terrors is in his ears; while he is in prosperity, the destroyer will come upon him.

²²He does not think that he will return out of darkness; the sword waits for him.

²³He goes to various places for bread, saying, 'Where is it?' He knows that the day of darkness is at hand.

²⁴Distress and anguish make him afraid; they prevail against him, as a king ready for battle.

²⁵Because he has reached out with his hand against God and has behaved proudly against the Almighty,

²⁶this wicked man runs at God with a stiff neck, with a thick shield.

²⁷This is true, even though he has covered his face with his fat and gathered fat on his loins,

²⁸and has lived in desolate cities; in houses which no man inhabits now and which were ready to become heaps.

²⁹He will not be rich; his wealth will not last and his possessions will not spread over the land.

³⁰He will not depart out of darkness; a flame will dry up his stalks; at the breath of God's mouth he will go away.

³¹Let him not trust in useless things, deceiving himself; for uselessness will be his reward.

³²It will happen before his time should come to die; his branch will not be green.

³³He will drop his unripe grapes like a grapevine; he will cast off his flowers like the olive tree.

³⁴For the company of godless people will be barren; fire will consume their tents of bribery.

³⁵They conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity; their womb conceives deceit.”