CHAPTER 15
1And Eliphaz the Temanite spoke up and he said:
2Will a wise man speak up ideas of hot air
and with the east wind fill his belly?
3Who disputes through speech will not avail
and from words will get no profit.
4So you thwart reverence,
5For your crime guides your mouth,
and you choose the tongue of the cunning.
6 Your own mouth condemns you, not I,
and your lips bear witness against you.
7 Are you the first man to be born,
before the hills were you spawned?
8Did you listen at God’s high council,
take away wisdom for yourself?
9What do you know that we don’t know,
understand, that is not with us?
10The gray-haired and the aged are with us,
far older than your father.
11 Are God’s consolations too little for you,
and the word that He whispered to you?
12How your heart has taken you off,
how your eyes have prompted you,
13that you should turn your hot air against God
and let out words from your mouth!
14What is man that he should merit
and that he born of woman should be in the right?
15 Why, His holy ones He does not trust,
and the heavens are not pure in His eyes.
16All the more, one vile and foul,
man who drinks mischief like water.
17I shall declare to you, listen to me,
and what I saw I shall recount,
18what the wise men have told
and have not concealed from their fathers.
19 To them alone the land was given,
no stranger passed in their midst.
20All the wicked man’s days he quakes,
and few years are set aside for the tyrant.
21The sound of fear is in his ears,
in peacetime the despoiler overtakes him.
22He trusts not to come back from darkness,
and he is targeted by the sword.
23He wanders for bread—where is it?
He knows that the dark day awaits him.
24 Failing and foe bring him terror,
overwhelm him like a king set for siege.
25 For he reached out his hand against God,
and Shaddai he assaulted.
26He rushes against him in neck-armor,
with his thickly bossed shield.
27His face is covered with fat,
his loins are layered with blubber.
28 He dwells in ruined towns,
in houses where no one lives that are readied for rubble heaps.
29He gets no riches, his wealth will not stand,
his yield does not bend to the earth.
30He does not turn away from darkness,
his shoots the flame withers,
he turns away in the breath of his mouth.
31Let the wayward not trust in vain things,
for in vain will his recompense be.
32Untimely he will wilt,
and his boughs will not be green.
33He will shed his unripe fruit like a vine
and cast off his bloom like an olive tree.
34For the crowd of the tainted is barren,
and fire consumes bribery’s tent.
35Pregnant with wretchedness, giving birth to crime,
their belly prepares deceit.