4779 Pentateuch | 6027 History | 2865 Wisdomand Poetry | 3740 MajorProphets | 890 MinorProphets | 3289 Gospelsand Acts | 1300 Paul'sLetters | 868 GeneralLetters | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me.
God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, and he broke me apart; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target;
his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and does not spare; he pours out my gall on the ground.
I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have laid my strength in the dust.
that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor.
For when a few years have come I shall go the way from which I shall not return.
“My spirit is broken; my days are extinct; the graveyard is ready for me.
He who informs against his friends to get a share of their property— the eyes of his children will fail.
“He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit.
The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stirs himself up against the godless.
Yet the righteous holds to his way, and he who has clean hands grows stronger and stronger.
My days are past; my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart.
They make night into day: ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’
if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’
Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?”
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:
You who tear yourself in your anger, shall the earth be forsaken for you, or the rock be removed out of its place?
“Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out, and the flame of his fire does not shine.
The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp above him is put out.
A trap seizes him by the heel; a snare lays hold of him.
A rope is hidden for him in the ground, a trap for him in the path.
It consumes the parts of his skin; the firstborn of death consumes his limbs.
He is torn from the tent in which he trusted and is brought to the king of terrors.
His memory perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the street.
He is thrust from light into darkness, and driven out of the world.
They of the west are appalled at his day, and horror seizes them of the east.
Surely such are the dwellings of the unrighteous, such is the place of him who knows not God.”
know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me.
He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head.
The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”
Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said:
that the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless but for a moment?
Though his height mount up to the heavens, and his head reach to the clouds,
He will fly away like a dream and not be found; he will be chased away like a vision of the night.
The eye that saw him will see him no more, nor will his place any more behold him.
His children will seek the favor of the poor, and his hands will give back his wealth.
His bones are full of his youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust.
yet his food is turned in his stomach; it is the venom of cobras within him.
He will suck the poison of cobras; the tongue of a viper will kill him.
He will not look upon the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds.
He will give back the fruit of his toil and will not swallow it down; from the profit of his trading he will get no enjoyment.
For he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build.
The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
ESV® Permanent Text Edition (2016). The ESV® text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers.
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