Job’s sins

¹Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:

²Can a human being be useful to God?

Can an intelligent person bring profit?

³Does the Almighty delight in your innocence?

Does he gain when you perfect your ways?

⁴Does he rebuke you for your piety,

bring you in for judgment?

⁵Isn’t your wickedness massive,

your iniquity endless?

⁶You have taken payments from your family for no reason;

stripped the naked, leaving no clothes;

⁷denied water to the thirsty,

withheld bread from the starving.

(

⁸The powerful own land;

the favored live in it.)

⁹You have sent widows away empty;

crushed orphans’ resources.

¹⁰For this reason, snares surround you;

sudden dread brings panic to you

¹¹or a darkness that you can’t see;

rushing water will cover you.

God’s activity

¹²Isn’t God in the heights of heaven;

see how high the topmost stars are?

¹³You say: “What does God know?

Can he judge through thick clouds?

¹⁴Clouds conceal him so he can’t see

¹⁵Will you keep the ancient way

traveled by sinful persons,

¹⁶who were snatched prematurely

when a river flooded their foundations,

¹⁷who say to God, “Turn away from us;

¹⁸Yet he filled their houses with good things;

a sinner’s logic is beyond me.

¹⁹The righteous see and rejoice;

the innocent mock them:

²⁰our enemies are certainly cut off;

fire will devour what’s left of them.

Turn to God

²¹Get along well with God and be at peace;

from this something good will come to you.

²²Receive instruction from his mouth;

put his words in your mind.

²³If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored;[#22.23 Heb or Mountain One ; also in 22:25 and 24:1]

if you keep wrongdoing out of your tent.

²⁴Lay your prized possession in the dust,

your gold from Ophir on a rock in a desert streambed.

²⁵The Almighty will be your prized possession,

silver piled up for you.

²⁶Then you will take pleasure in the Almighty;

lift up your face to God.

²⁷You will pray to him, and he will hear you;

you will fulfill your solemn promises.

²⁸If you decree something, it will stand;

light will shine on your ways.

²⁹When they’re humbled, you will say: “Cheer up;

God will rescue the lowly.

³⁰He will deliver the guilty;

they will be saved by your pure hands.”