Eliphaz’s second speech
15
📚✭Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: 2 📚✭“Should a wise man answer with empty knowledge, filling his belly with the east wind? 3 📚Should he reason with unprofitable talk? Or with speeches which have no value? 4 📚✭Yes, you are rejecting the fear of God, and are restraining prayer before God. 5 📚✭For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty. 6 📚Your own mouth condemns you and not I. Yes, your own lips testify against you. 7 📚✭“Are you the first man ever born? Or were you made before the hills? 8 📚Have you heard the secret counsel of God? And do you limit wisdom to yourself? 9 📚What do you know that we do not know? What understanding do you have that is not in us? 10 📚Both the gray-haired and aged are with us, even older than your father.
11 📚✭Are the consolations of God too small for you, words spoken gently to you?
12 📚✭Why does your heart carry you away? And why do your eyes flash,
13 📚that you should turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?
14 📚✭“What is man, that he can be clean? And he who is born of woman that he can be righteous?
15 📚Look, he puts no trust in his holy ones; indeed, the heavens are not pure in his sight.
16 📚How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinks up iniquity like water!
17 📚✭“I will tell you something. Listen to me, and I will declare to you what I have seen,
18 📚what wise men have told and not concealed from their fathers,
19 📚to whom alone the land was given, when no foreigner passed among them: 20 📚✭The wicked man writhes in pain all his days; the number of his years is hidden from the oppressor.
21 📚Terrifying sounds ring in his ears. In prosperity the destroyer comes on him.
22 📚He does not believe that he will return from darkness, as the sword waits for him.
23 📚He wanders around for food, saying ‘Where is it?’ He knows that his day of darkness is already at hand.
24 📚Trouble and anguish make him afraid. They overwhelm him like a king ready for battle.
25 📚For he stretches out his hand against God and strengthens himself against the Almighty,
26 📚running at him headlong with his thick embossed shield.
27 📚“Though his fat covers his face, and his waist bulges with fat,
28 📚he will live in desolate cities, in houses where no man lives, which are about to become heaps of rubble.
29 📚He will not become rich; nor will his wealth continue; nor will his possessions spread in the land.
30 📚He will not depart from darkness. The flame will dry up his branches; and by the breath of God’s mouth he will pass away.
31 📚Let him not deceive himself, trusting in emptiness. For emptiness will be his reward.
32 📚This will be fulfilled before his time, and his branch will not become green.
33 📚Like a vine he will shake off his unripe grape, and like an olive tree will shed his blossom.
34 📚For the company of hypocrites✭ will be barren, and fire will consume the tents enriched by bribery.
35 📚They conceive trouble and give birth to evil, and their inner man prepares deceit”.