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✭Elihu continued his answer and said,2 📚“Listen to my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who have understanding.
3 📚For the ear tests words as the mouth tastes food.
4 📚Let us choose for ourselves what is just, let us find out among ourselves what is good.
5 📚✭“For Job has said, ‘I am righteous, and God has taken away justice from me.
6 📚Should I lie about my right? My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’
7 📚What man is like Job, who drinks up scorn like water?
8 📚He goes in the company of evildoers, and walks with wicked men.
9 📚For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing for him to delight in God.’
10 📚✭“Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding. Far be it from God to act wickedly, and from the Almighty to commit iniquity!
11 📚For he will repay a man according to his deeds, and sees that everyone finds the reward for his ways.
12 📚Yes, certainly God will not act wickedly, nor will the Almighty pervert justice.
13 📚✭Who put him in charge of the earth? Or who has appointed him over the whole world?
14 📚If he sets his heart on it✭, and gathers back to himself his Spirit and his breath,
15 📚All flesh would perish together, and man would turn again to dust.
16 📚“Now if you have understanding hear this; listen to the sound of my words.
17 📚✭Should one who hates the right govern? And will you condemn the most just one?
18 📚✭Is it proper to say to a king, ‘You are wicked?’ And to princes, ‘You are ungodly?’
19 📚How much less the One who does not show favouritism to princes, or regard the rich more than the poor! For they are all the work of his hands.
20 📚In a moment they die in the middle of the night, and the people are troubled and pass away, and the mighty are taken away without a hand touching them.
21 📚“For his eyes are on the ways of man, and he sees all his steps.
22 📚There is no darkness or shadow of death where evildoers can hide themselves.
23 📚✭For he does not need to lay more charges on man, that he should go before him in judgment.
24 📚Without investigation he breaks in pieces mighty men and sets up others in their place.
25 📚For he knows their deeds, and he overturns them in the night, so that they are destroyed.
26 📚He strikes them down as the wicked men they are, openly, in the sight of others,
27 📚Because they turned back from him and would not consider any of his ways,
28 📚Causing the cry of the poor to come to him; and he heard the cry of the afflicted.
29 📚When he gives quietness, who then can make trouble? And when he hides his face, who then can see him, whether this is done against a nation or against an individual?
30 📚He does this so that the hypocrite does not reign and the people are not ensnared.
31 📚✭“For it is right to say to God, ‘I have borne punishment. I will not offend again.
32 📚Teach me what I do not see. If I have committed iniquity, I will not do so again.’
33 📚Should he reward you according to your terms, even though you refuse his way? You must choose, and not I. Therefore tell what you know.
34 📚✭Let men of understanding say to me, a wise man who listens to me,
35 📚‘Job has spoken without knowledge, and his words were without wisdom.’
36 📚My desire is that Job may be tested to the utmost, for giving answers like wicked men.
37 📚For he adds rebellion to his sin. He scornfully claps his hands together among us, and multiplies his words against God”.