Job 15.16
English standard version

Intervention n° 2 d’Éliphaz

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
² Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge,
and fill his belly with the east wind?
³ Should he argue in unprofitable talk,
or in words with which he can do no good?
⁴ But you are doing away with the fear of God
and hindering meditation before God.
⁵ For your iniquity teaches your mouth,
and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
⁶ Your 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?
⁸ Have 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.
¹¹ Are the comforts of God too small for you,
or the word that deals gently with you?
¹² Why does your heart carry you away,
and why do your eyes flash,
¹³ that 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?
¹⁵ Behold, 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,
¹⁹ to whom alone the land was given,
and no stranger passed among them).
²⁰ The 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.
²² He does not believe that he will return out of darkness,
and he is marked for the sword.
²³ He wanders abroad for bread, saying, Where is it?
He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand;
²⁴ distress and anguish terrify him;
they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle.
²⁵ Because he has stretched out his hand against God
and defies the Almighty,
²⁶ running stubbornly against him
with a thickly bossed shield;
²⁷ because he has covered his face with his fat
and gathered fat upon his waist
²⁸ and has lived in desolate cities,
in houses that none should inhabit,
which were ready to become heaps of ruins;
²⁹ he will not be rich, and his wealth will not endure,
nor will his possessions spread over the earth;
³⁰ he will not depart from darkness;
the flame will dry up his shoots,
and by the breath of his mouth he will depart.
³¹ Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself,
for emptiness will be his payment.
³² It will be paid in full before his time,
and his branch will not be green.
³³ He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine,
and cast off his blossom like the olive tree.
³⁴ For the company of the godless is barren,
and fire consumes the tents of bribery.
³⁵ They conceive trouble and give birth to evil,
and their womb prepares deceit.