Job’s Last Words to His Friends

¹Moreover Job continued his discourse:[#Job 29:1]

²“As God lives, who has taken away my judgment,[#Job 34:5]

and the Almighty, who has made my soul bitter,

³all the while my spirit is in me,

and the breath of God is in my nostrils,

⁴my lips will not speak wickedness,

nor my tongue utter deceit.

⁵God forbid that I should justify you.

Until I die I will not put away my integrity from me.

⁶My righteousness I hold fast and will not let it go;[#Job 2:3]

my heart will not reproach me as long as I live.

⁷“Let my enemy be like the wicked,

and he who rises up against me like the unrighteous.

⁸For what is the hope of the hypocrite,

though he may gain much, when God takes away his soul?

⁹Will God hear his cry

when trouble comes upon him?

¹⁰Will he delight himself in the Almighty?[#Job 22:26–27; Ps 37:4]

Will he always call upon God?

¹¹“I will teach you about the hand of God;

what is with the Almighty I will not conceal.

¹²Behold, all of you have seen it;

why then have you become altogether vain?

¹³“This is the portion of a wicked man with God,

and the inheritance that oppressors receive from the Almighty:

¹⁴If his children are multiplied, it is for the sword,[#Dt 28:41]

and his offspring will not be satisfied with bread.

¹⁵Those who survive him will be buried in death,

and their widows will not weep.

¹⁶Though he heaps up silver like the dust[#Zec 9:3]

and piles up clothing like the clay—

¹⁷he may pile it up, but the just will wear it,[#Pr 13:22; Ecc 2:26]

and the innocent will divide the silver.

¹⁸He builds his house like a moth,[#Job 8:14–15]

and like a booth that the watchman makes.

¹⁹The rich man will lie down, but he will not be gathered;[#Job 24:24; Jer 8:2]

he opens his eyes, and he is not.

²⁰Terrors overtake him like floodwaters;[#Job 15:21; 18:11]

a tempest steals him away in the night.

²¹The east wind carries him away, and he departs;

it sweeps him out of his place.

²²For God will cast it upon him and not spare;

he would flee from its power.

²³Men will clap their hands at him

and will hiss him out of his place.