Zophar’s second speech
20
📚Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said, 2 📚“Therefore my troubled thoughts compel me to answer, and so I make haste to speak.
3 📚✭I have heard the rebuke that reproaches me, and my understanding spirit causes me to answer.
4 📚✭“Do you not know from olden times, since man✭ was placed on earth,
5 📚That the triumph of the wicked is brief, and the joy of the hypocrite is only for a moment?
6 📚Though his arrogance mounts up to the heavens, and his head reaches to the clouds,
7 📚Yet he will perish forever like his own dung. Those who had seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’
8 📚He will fly away like a dream, and will not be found. Yes, he will be chased away like a vision of the night,
9 📚And the eye which saw him will see him no longer; nor will his place any longer set eyes on him.
10 📚His children will seek the favour of the poor, and his hands will give back his wealth.
11 📚His bones are filled with youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust.
12 📚“Though wickedness is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue,
13 📚Though he spares it and does not forsake it, but still keeps it in his mouth,
14 📚Yet his food in his stomach will turn sour, and become like the venom of cobras inside him.
15 📚He has swallowed down riches, but will vomit them up again. God will expel them from his stomach.
16 📚He will suck the poison of cobras; the viper’s tongue will kill him.
17 📚He will not see the streams, the rivers flowing with honey and cream.
18 📚That for which he laboured he will not give back, and will not swallow it down. He will get no enjoyment from the riches obtained from his trading.
19 📚Because he has oppressed and abandoned the poor, because he has violently taken away a house which he did not build,
20 📚“Surely he will feel no quietness in his inner being. He will not keep anything he desires.
21 📚Nothing will be left for him to eat, so his well-being will not last.
22 📚In the fullness of his abundance, he will experience distress. The hand of all the miserable will come against him.
23 📚As he is about to fill his stomach, God will hurl on him the fury of his wrath, will rain it down on him while he is eating.
24 📚He will flee from the iron weapon; a bronze bow will pierce him.
25 📚It is drawn out; it comes out of the back; yes, the glittering point goes through his gall bladder. Terrors seize him.
26 📚Total darkness lies in wait for his treasures. An unfanned fire will consume him. It will go ill with him who is left in his tent.
27 📚The heavens will reveal his iniquity, and the earth will rise up against him.
28 📚The increase in his house will depart, and his possessions will flow away in the day of God’s wrath.
29 📚This is the allotment of a wicked man from God, the inheritance God appoints for him”.