📖 Job 15
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Eliphaz’s Second Speech Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:
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“Does a wise man answer with blustery knowledge, or fill his belly with the east wind?
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Does he argue with useless talk, with words that have no value in them?
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But you even break off piety, and hinder meditation before God.
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Your sin inspires your mouth; you choose the language of the crafty.
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Your own mouth condemns you, not I; your own lips testify against you.
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“Were you the first man ever born? Were you brought forth before the hills?
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Do you listen in on God’s secret council? Do you limit wisdom to yourself?
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What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand that we don’t understand?
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The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, men far older than your father.
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Are God’s consolations too trivial for you; or a word spoken in gentleness to you?
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Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash,
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when you turn your rage against God and allow such words to escape from your mouth?
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What is man that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
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If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes,
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how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt, who drinks in evil like water!
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“I will explain to you; listen to me, and what I have seen, I will declare,
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what wise men declare, hiding nothing, from the tradition of their ancestors,
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to whom alone the land was given when no foreigner passed among them.
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All his days the wicked man suffers torment, throughout the number of the years that are stored up for the tyrant.
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Terrifying sounds fill his ears; in a time of peace marauders attack him.
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He does not expect to escape from darkness; he is marked for the sword;
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he wanders about– food for vultures; he knows that the day of darkness is at hand.
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Distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him like a king ready to launch an attack,
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for he stretches out his hand against God, and vaunts himself against the Almighty,
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defiantly charging against him with a thick, strong shield!
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Because he covered his face with fat, and made his hips bulge with fat,
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he lived in ruined towns and in houses where no one lives, where they are ready to crumble into heaps.
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He will not grow rich, and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the land.
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He will not escape the darkness; a flame will wither his shoots and he will depart by the breath of God’s mouth.
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Let him not trust in what is worthless, deceiving himself; for worthlessness will be his reward.
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Before his time he will be paid in full, and his branches will not flourish.
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Like a vine he will let his sour grapes fall, and like an olive tree he will shed his blossoms.
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For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of those who accept bribes.
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They conceive trouble and bring forth evil; their belly prepares deception.”