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Eliphaz Says Job Presumes Much

¹ Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered Job and said,

² "Should a wise man such as you utter such windy and vain knowledge as we have just heard
^(C1)And fill himself with the east wind of withering, parching, and violent accusations?

³ "Should he rebuke and argue with useless talk?
Or with words in which there is no benefit?

⁴ "Indeed, you are doing away with fear,
And you are diminishing meditation before God.

⁵ "For ^(C1)your guilt teaches your mouth,
And you choose to speak the language of ^(C2)the crafty and cunning.

⁶ "Your ^(C1)own mouth condemns you, and not I;
Yes, your own lips testify against you.

⁷ "Were you the first man to be born the original wise man,
Or ^(C1)were you created before the hills?

⁸ "Do you hear the ^(C1)secret counsel of God,
And do you limit the possession of wisdom to yourself?

⁹ "^(C1)What do you know that we do not know?
What do you understand that is not equally clear to us?

¹⁰ "Among us are both the ^(C1)gray-haired and the aged,
Older than your father.

¹¹ "Are ^(C1)the consolations of God as we have interpreted them to you too trivial for you,
Or ^(C2)were we too gentle toward you in our first speech to be effective?

¹² "Why does your ^(C1)heart carry you away allowing you to be controlled by emotion?
And why do your eyes flash in anger or contempt,

¹³ That you should turn your spirit against God
And let such words as you have spoken go out of your mouth?

¹⁴ "What is man, that ^(C1)he should be pure and clean,
Or ^(C2)he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous and just?

¹⁵ "Behold, God puts no trust in His ^(C1)holy ones (angels);
Indeed, the ^(C2)heavens are not pure in His sight—

¹⁶ How much less pure and clean is the one who is ^(C1)repulsive and corrupt,
Man, who ^(C2)drinks unrighteousness and injustice like water!

What Eliphaz Has Seen of Life

¹⁷ "I will tell you, listen to me;
And what I have seen I will also declare;

¹⁸ What wise men have freely told,
And have not hidden anything passed on to them from ^(C1)their fathers,

¹⁹ To whom alone the land was given,
And no stranger passed among them corrupting the truth.

²⁰ "The wicked man writhes ^(C1)with pain all his days,
And numbered are the years ^(C2)stored up for him, the ruthless one.

²¹ "A dreadful sound of ^(C1)terrors is in his ears;
^(C2)While at peace and in a time of prosperity the destroyer comes upon him the tent of the robber is not at peace.

²² "He does not believe that he will ^(C1)return out of the darkness for fear of being murdered,
And he is destined for ^(C2)the sword of God's vengeance.

²³ "He wanders about for food, saying, 'Where is it?'
He knows that the day of ^(C1)darkness and destruction is already at hand.

²⁴ "Distress and anxiety terrify him,
They overpower him like a king ready for battle.

²⁵ "Because he has stretched out his hand against God
And behaves ^(C1)arrogantly against ^(F1)the Almighty,

²⁶ Running and charging headlong against Him
With his ornamented and massive shield;

²⁷ For he has ^(C1)covered his face with his fat,
Adding layers of fat to his thighs giving himself up to pleasures,

²⁸ And he has ^(C1)lived in desolate God-forsaken cities,
In houses which no one should inhabit,
Which were destined to become heaps of ruins;

²⁹ He ^(C1)will not become rich, nor will his wealth endure;
And his grain will not bend to the earth nor his possessions be extended on the earth.

³⁰ "He will ^(C1)not escape from darkness fleeing disaster;
The ^(C2)flame of God's wrath will wither his branch,
And by ^(C3)the blast of His mouth he will go away.

³¹ "Let him not trust in vanity (emptiness, futility) and ^(C1)be led astray;
For emptiness will be his ^(F1)reward for such living.

³² "It will be fulfilled ^(C1)while he still lives,
And his ^(C2)branch will not be green but shall wither away.

³³ "He will fail to bring his grapes to maturity leaving them to wither unnourished on the vine,
And will ^(C1)cast off blossoms and fail to bring forth fruit like the olive tree.

³⁴ "For the company of ^(C1)the godless is barren,
And fire consumes ^(C2)the tents of bribery (wrong and injustice).

³⁵ "They ^(C1)conceive mischief and bring forth wickedness,
And their inmost soul prepares deceit and fraud."