- 15:1And Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said,
- 15:2Should a wise man answer with the knowledge of wind, / And should he fill his belly with the east wind?
- 15:3Should he argue with useless talk / And with words by which he cannot avail?
- 15:4Indeed you do away with the fear of God / And restrain meditation before God.
- 15:5For your iniquity instructs your mouth, / And you choose the tongue of the crafty.
- 15:6Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; / And your own lips testify against you.
- 15:7Are you the first man born? / Or were you brought forth before the hills?
- 15:8Did you listen in on the secret council of God? / And do you limit wisdom to yourself?
- 15:9What do you know that we do not know? / What do you understand that is not with us?
- 15:10Both the grayheaded and the aged are among us, / Older than your father.
- 15:11Are the consolations of God too small for you, / Or the word spoken gently to you?
- 15:12Why does your heart take you away? / And why do your eyes flash,
- 15:13That you turn your spirit against God / And let words go forth from your mouth?
- 15:14What is mortal man, that he can be clean, / Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?
- 15:15Indeed, He puts no trust in His holy ones; / Even the heavens are not clean in His eyes.
- 15:16How much less one who is abominable and corrupt! / How much less a man who drinks wrong like water!
- 15:17I will tell you; hear me; / And what I have seen, that will I recount,
- 15:18What wise men have declared, / And have not hidden, from their fathers;
- 15:19To whom alone the land was given, / And no stranger passed in their midst:
- 15:20For all his days the wicked man travails in pain, / And numbered years are stored up for the ruthless man.
- 15:21The sound of terrors is in his ears; / While he is at peace, the destroyer will come upon him.
- 15:22He does not believe that he will return from the darkness, / And he is spied out for the sword.
- 15:23He wanders for bread-where is it? / He knows that the day of darkness is ready at hand.
- 15:24Distress and straits terrify him; / They prevail against him, like a king prepared for the attack;
- 15:25Because he stretched out his hand against God, / And against the Almighty he acted mightily,
- 15:26Running against Him with a stiff neck, / With the thick bosses of his shield;
- 15:27Because he covered his face with his fatness / And gathered fat upon his loins;
- 15:28And he dwelt in desolated cities, / In houses which should not have been inhabited, / Which were appointed to become heaps.
- 15:29He will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure; / Nor will his produce bend down to the earth.
- 15:30He will not go away from darkness; / The flame will dry up his shoots, / And by the breath of His mouth he will go away.
- 15:31Let him not trust in vanity, deceiving himself; / For vanity will be his recompense.
- 15:32It will be fully paid before his day, / And his branch will not be flourishing.
- 15:33He will shake off his unripe grapes like a vine, / And he will cast off his blossom like an olive tree.
- 15:34For the company of the profane will be barren, / And fire will devour the tents of bribery.
- 15:35They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity, / And their heart prepares deceit.
- 16:1Then Job answered and said,
- 16:2I have heard many such things; / Troubling comforters are you all.
- 16:3Do words of wind have an end? / Or what has provoked you that you so respond?
- 16:4I also could speak like you, / If your soul were in my soul's stead; / I could join my words together against you / And shake my head at you.
- 16:5I could strengthen you with my mouth, / And the movement of my lips would mitigate your pain.
- 16:6If I speak, my pain is not mitigated; / And if I forbear, how much departs from me?
- 16:7But now He has worn me out; / You have desolated all my company.
- 16:8And You have seized me; it is a testimony against me; / And my leanness rises up against me; it testifies to my face.
- 16:9In His wrath He has torn me to pieces and been adverse toward me; / He has gnashed His teeth at me. / My Adversary sharpens His eyes at me.
- 16:10With their mouth they gape at me; / They strike my cheek reproachfully; / They mass themselves together against me.
- 16:11God has delivered me over to the unjust / And cast me down into the hands of the wicked.
- 16:12I was at ease, and He broke me apart; / Indeed He took me by my neck and dashed me to pieces. / And He set me up as His target;
- 16:13His archers surrounded me; / He split open my kidneys and did not desist; / He poured out my gall upon the earth.
- 16:14He broke me open with breach upon breach; / He ran at me like a mighty man of war.
- 16:15I have sewn sackcloth upon my skin / And have cast my horn into the dust.
- 16:16My face is reddened with weeping, / And on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
- 16:17Though there is no violence in my hands, / And my prayer is pure.
- 16:18O earth, do not cover my blood; / And let there be no resting place for my crying out.
- 16:19Even now, there in heaven is my Witness, / And He who vouches for me is in the heights.
- 16:20My friends deride me; / My eye pours out tears to God,
- 16:21That He would plead for a man in his case with God / And for a son of man in his case with his neighbor.
- 16:22For when years few in number have come, / I will go the way from which I cannot return.
- 17:1My spirit is broken; / My days are extinct; / The graveyard is ready for me.
- 17:2Surely there are mockers with me, / And my eye lingers on their provocation.
- 17:3Lay down now a pledge for me with Yourself; / Who is he who will strike hands with me?
- 17:4For You have hidden their heart from insight; / Therefore You will not exalt them.
- 17:5He who denounces his friends for a share of the profit taken, / Even the eyes of his children will fail.
- 17:6But He has made me a byword of the people, / And I have become one on whom they may spit.
- 17:7And my eye has grown dim because of the sorrow, / And my members are all like a shadow.
- 17:8The upright are appalled at this, / And the innocent stir themselves up against the profane man.
- 17:9Yet the righteous man will hold fast to his way, / And he whose hands are clean will wax yet stronger.
- 17:10But all of you, come back now, / And I will not find a wise man among you.
- 17:11My days have passed; broken are my plans, / The cherished thoughts of my heart.
- 17:12They change night into day; / The light is near, they say in the face of darkness.
- 17:13If I wait for Sheol as my house; / If I spread my couch in the darkness;
- 17:14If I call out to the pit, You are my father; / You are my mother and my sister, to the worm;
- 17:15Where then is my hope? / Indeed, my hope, who will see it?
- 17:16It will go down to the bars of Sheol, / When, at the same time, we have rest in the dust.