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Elihu Reminds Job of God’s Justice

¹ And Elihu went on to say:² “Do you think it is just when you say, ‘I am righteous before God.’?³ For you ask, ‘What does it profit me, and what benefit do I gain apart from sin?’⁴ I will answer you and your friends with you.⁵ Look to the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds high above you.⁶ If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? If you multiply your transgressions, what do you do to Him?⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give Him, or what does He receive from your hand?⁸ Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself, and your righteousness only a son of men.

⁹ Men cry out under great oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the mighty.¹⁰ But no one asks, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives us songs in the night,¹¹ who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?’¹² There they cry out, but He does not answer, because of the pride of evil men.¹³ Surely God does not listen to empty pleas, and the Almighty does not take note of it.

¹⁴ How much less, then, when you say that you do not see Him, that your case is before Him and you must wait for Him,¹⁵ and further, that in His anger He has not punished or taken much notice of folly.¹⁶ So Job opens his mouth in vain and multiplies words without knowledge.”