Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come.
my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover over my iniquity.
“Should a wise man answer with windy knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?
What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?
how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water!
He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that a day of darkness is ready at his hand;
distress and anguish terrify him; they prevail against him, like a king ready for battle.
running stubbornly against him with a thickly bossed shield;
And he has shriveled me up, which is a witness against me, and my leanness has risen up against me; it testifies to my face.
He breaks me with breach upon breach; he runs upon me like a warrior.
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.
“Lay down a pledge for me with you; who is there who will put up security 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.
My eye has grown dim from vexation, and all my members are like a shadow.
But you, come on again, all of you, and I shall not find a wise man among you.
For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks on its mesh.
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.
He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
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.
“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.”
I hear censure that insults me, and out of my understanding a spirit answers me.
that the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless but for a moment?
He will fly away like a dream and not be found; he will be chased away like a vision of the night.
He will suck the poison of cobras; the tongue of a viper will kill him.
For he has crushed and abandoned the poor; he has seized a house that he did not build.
He will flee from an iron weapon; a bronze arrow will strike him through.
Utter darkness is laid up for his treasures; a fire not fanned will devour him; what is left in his tent will be consumed.
They send out their little boys like a flock, and their children dance.
“Can a man be profitable to God? Surely he who is wise is profitable to himself.
or darkness, so that you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you.
You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you, and light will shine on your ways.
They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; they take the widow's ox for a pledge.
(There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast, and they take a pledge against the poor.)
The murderer rises before it is light, that he may kill the poor and needy, and in the night he is like a thief.
The womb forgets them; the worm finds them sweet; they are no longer remembered, so wickedness is broken like a tree.’
They are exalted a little while, and then are gone; they are brought low and gathered up like all others; they are cut off like the heads of grain.
If it is not so, who will prove me a liar and show that there is nothing in what I say?”
how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!”
He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness.
Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?”
“This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage that oppressors receive from the Almighty:
He builds his house like a moth's, like a booth that a watchman makes.
Terrors overtake him like a flood; in the night a whirlwind carries him off.
“Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold that they refine.
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