Job - Chapter 15

¹ Eliphaz of Teman spoke next. He said:

² Does anyone wise respond with windy arguments, or feed on an east wind?

³ Or make a defence with ineffectual words and speeches good for nothing?

⁴ You do worse: you suppress reverence, you discredit discussion before God.

⁵ Your very fault incites you to speak like this, hence you adopt this language of cunning.

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

⁷ Are you the first-born of the human race, brought into the world before the hills?

⁸ Have you been a listener at God's council, or established a monopoly of wisdom?

⁹ What knowledge do you have that we have not, what understanding that is not ours too?

¹⁰ One of us is an old, grey-headed man loaded with more years than your father!

¹¹ Can you ignore these divine consolations and the moderate tone of our words?

¹² How passion carries you away! And how you roll your eyes,

¹³ when you vent your anger on God and speeches come tripping off your tongue!

¹⁴ How can anyone be pure, anyone born of woman be upright?

¹⁵ God cannot rely even on his holy ones, to him, even the heavens seem impure.

¹⁶ How much more, this hateful, corrupt thing, humanity, which soaks up wickedness like water!

¹⁷ Listen to me, I have a lesson for you: I am going to impart my own experience

¹⁸ and the tradition of the sages who have remained faithful to their ancestors,

¹⁹ to whom alone the land was given -- no foreigner included among them.

²⁰ The life of the wicked is unceasing torment, the years allotted to the tyrant are numbered.

²¹ A cry of panic echoes in his ear; when all is peace, his destroyer swoops down on him.

²² No more can he count on escaping from the dark, but knows that he is destined for the sword,

²³ marked down as meat for the vulture. He knows that his ruin is at hand.

²⁴ The hour of darkness terrifies him, distress and anguish assail him as when a king is poised for the assault.

²⁵ He raised his hand against God, boldly he defied Shaddai!

²⁶ Head lowered, he charged him, with his massively bossed shield.

²⁷ His face had grown full and fat, and his thighs too heavy with flesh.

²⁸ He had occupied the towns he had destroyed, with their uninhabited houses about to fall into ruins;

²⁹ but no great profit to him, his luck will not hold, he will cast his shadow over the country no longer,

³⁰ (he will not escape the dark). A flame will scorch his young shoots, the wind will carry off his blossom.

³¹ Let him not trust in his great height or delusion will be his.

³² His palm trees will wither before their time and his branches never again be green.

³³ Like the vine, he will shake off his unripe fruit, like the olive tree, shed his blossom.

³⁴ Yes, sterile is the spawn of the sinner, and fire consumes the tents of the venal.

³⁵ Whoever conceives malice, breeds disaster, bears as offspring only a false hope.

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