Zophar: Destruction Awaits the Wicked
And Zophar the Naamathite answered and said:
Therefore my disquieting thoughts answer me, and because of the haste within me.
I hear the discipline of my own humiliation, and a spirit out of my understanding answers me.
Do you know this, from of old, from the setting of man upon the earth,
that the glad cry of the wicked is brief, and the joy of the godless lasts a moment?
Though his height goes up to the heavens, and his head reaches to the cloud,
like his own dung he perishes forever; those who saw him say, “Where is he?”
Like a dream he flies away, and they do not find him; and he is chased away like a vision of the night.
The eye that glimpsed him does so no more, and his place beholds him no longer.
His sons will seek the favor of the poor, and his own hands will give back his wealth.
His bones were full of his youth — and it lies down with him in the dust.
Though evil is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue,
though he spares it and will not let it go, and holds it back in the midst of his palate,
his bread is turned in his bowels; it is the gall of cobras within him.
He has swallowed wealth, and he vomits it up; God drives it out of his belly.
He sucks the poison of cobras; the tongue of the viper kills him.
He will not look on the streams, the rivers of wadis of honey and curds.
He gives back what he labored for, and does not swallow it; as with the wealth of his trading, he does not rejoice.
For he crushed and abandoned the poor; he seized a house he did not build.
For he knew no quiet in his belly; with what he desired he does not escape.
Nothing was left of his eating; therefore his good does not last.
In the fullness of his sufficiency he is in distress; every hand of the troubled comes upon him.
Let it be, to fill his belly — he sends against him the burning of his anger, and rains it upon him as his food.
He flees from an iron weapon; a bronze bow passes him through.
He draws it out, and it comes from his back; and the lightning comes from his gall. Terrors are upon him.
All darkness is hidden away for his treasures; a fire not blown upon consumes him; it goes ill with the survivor in his tent.
The heavens uncover his iniquity, and the earth rises up against him.
The increase of his house departs, poured away in the day of his anger.
This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance decreed for him from God.