Eliphaz: Job Does Not Fear God
And Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?
Arguing with a word that does no good, and with sayings in which there is no profit?
You even break down the fear of God, and diminish meditation before God.
For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
Your own mouth condemns you, and not I; and your lips answer against you.
Were you born the first man? Were you brought forth before the hills?
Do you listen in the council of God, and take wisdom to yourself?
What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not with us?
Both the gray-haired and the aged are among us, greater in days than your father.
Are the comforts of God too little for you, and a word spoken gently with you?
Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash,
that you turn your spirit against God, and bring out such words from your mouth?
What is a mortal, that he should be clean? And that one born of woman should be righteous?
Look, in his holy ones he does not trust, and the heavens are not clean in his eyes —
how much less one abhorrent and corrupt, a man drinking injustice like water.
I will declare to you — hear me; and what I have seen I will recount:
what the wise have told, and did not conceal from their fathers;
to them alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them.
All the days of a wicked man he writhes; and the number of years is stored up for the ruthless.
A sound of terrors is in his ears; in peace the destroyer comes upon him.
He does not believe he will return from darkness, and he is watched for by the sword.
He wanders about for bread — where is it? He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand.
Distress and anguish dismay him; they overpower him like a king ready for the assault —
because he stretched out his hand against God, and made himself mighty against the Almighty;
he runs at him with a stiff neck, with the thick bosses of his shields —
because he covered his face with his fat, and made rolls of fat on his loins.
And he dwelt in effaced cities, in houses no one lives in, that were destined to become heaps.
He will not be rich, and his wealth will not stand, and their possessions will not stretch out to the earth.
He will not turn aside from darkness; a flame will dry up his shoot, and he will turn aside by the breath of his mouth.
Let him not trust in emptiness — he is led astray; for emptiness will be his exchange.
It will be filled up before his day, and his branch will not be green.
He will shake off his unripe grape like the vine, and cast off his blossom like the olive.
For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery.
Conceiving trouble and giving birth to iniquity — and their belly prepares deceit.