﻿Job.
Chapter 15.
Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 
“Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge and fill his belly with the east wind? 
Should he argue with useless talk, with words that do no good? 
But you undermine reverence and diminish meditation before God. 
For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. 
Your own mouth condemns you, not I; your own lips testify against you. 
Were you the first man born? Were you brought forth before the hills? 
Have you listened in God's secret council? Do you keep wisdom for yourself alone? 
What do you know that we do not know? What do you understand that is not with us? 
Among us are both the gray-haired and the aged, far older than your father. 
Are God's consolations too little for you, or a word spoken gently to you? 
Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, 
that you turn your spirit against God and let such words out of your mouth? 
What is a mortal, that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous? 
Look, he puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his eyes. 
How much less one who is detestable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water! 
I will tell you; listen to me. What I have seen I will recount, 
what wise men have told, without concealing what came from their fathers, 
to whom alone the land was given, and no foreigner passed among them. 
All his days the wicked man writhes in pain, through the numbered years reserved for the ruthless. 
The sound of terrors is in his ears; in peace a destroyer comes upon him. 
He does not believe he will return from darkness; the sword lies in wait for him. 
He wanders about for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand. 
Trouble and anguish terrify him; they overpower him like a king ready for battle. 
For he stretched out his hand against God and defied the Almighty. 
He rushes at him with neck outstretched, with the thick bosses of his shields. 
Though he has covered his face with fat and laid fat on his flanks, 
he dwells in desolated cities, in houses where no one lives, destined to become heaps of ruins. 
He will not grow rich, and his wealth will not endure; their possessions will not spread over the earth. 
He will not escape from darkness; a flame will dry up his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will depart. 
Let the deceived man not trust in emptiness, for emptiness will be his reward. 
It will be fulfilled before his time, and his branch will not be green. 
He will shed his unripe grapes like a vine and cast off his blossoms like an olive tree. 
For the company of the godless is barren, and fire consumes the tents of bribery. 
They conceive trouble and give birth to evil; their belly prepares deceit.” 
