Eliphaz: were you the first man born?
1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 2Does a wise man answer with windy knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? 3Does he argue with talk that is no use, with words that gain nothing? 4You are even doing away with reverence and cutting short devotion before God. 5It is your guilt that schools your mouth; you choose the tongue of the crafty. 6Your own mouth condemns you, not I; your own lips testify against you. 7Were you the first man to be born? Were you brought forth before the hills? 8Do you listen in on the council of Eloah? Do you keep wisdom to yourself? 9What do you know that we do not? What do you understand that is not with us as well? 10Among us are the gray-haired and the very old, older in days than your father. 11Are the consolations of God too little for you, and a word spoken gently to you? 12Why does your heart carry you away? Why do your eyes flash, 13that against God you turn your spirit and bring words out of your mouth? 14What is a mortal, that he should be clean, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous? 15See, he puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in his eyes; 16how much less one who is loathsome and corrupt, a man who drinks in wrongdoing like water.
What I have seen I will recount
17I will tell you — listen to me; what I have seen I will recount: 18what wise men have declared, not hiding what came from their fathers, 19to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed through their midst. 20All his days the wicked man writhes, through the few years stored up for the ruthless. 21The sound of terrors is in his ears; in time of peace the destroyer comes on him. 22He does not believe he will come back from the darkness; he is marked out for the sword. 23He wanders after bread — where is it? He knows the day of darkness is ready at his hand. 24Distress and anguish terrify him; they overpower him like a king ready for the assault. 25For he stretched out his hand against God and made himself strong against the Almighty; 26he ran at him head down, behind the thick bosses of his shield. 27For he covered his face with his fat and piled flesh on his flanks; 28and he settled in cities that had been wiped out, in houses no one lives in, houses ready to become heaps of rubble. 29He will not grow rich, his wealth will not last, and what he owns will not bend down to the earth. 30He will not escape the darkness; a flame will dry up his shoots, and he will be gone at the breath of his mouth. 31Let him not trust in emptiness — he is deceived, for emptiness will be what he gets in exchange. 32It will be paid in full before his day comes, and his branch will not stay green. 33He will shake off his unripe grapes like a vine and drop his blossom like an olive tree. 34For the company of the godless is barren, and fire eats up the tents of bribery. 35They conceive trouble and give birth to iniquity, and their belly prepares deceit.
