Job 15

²“Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge,

³Should he reason with unprofitable talk,

⁴Yes, you do away with fear,

⁵For your iniquity teaches your mouth,

⁶Your own mouth condemns you, and not I.

⁷“Are you the first man who was born?

⁸Have you heard the secret counsel of God?

⁹What do you know that we don’t know?

¹⁰With us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men,

¹¹Are the consolations of God too small for you,

¹²Why does your heart carry you away?

¹³that you turn your spirit against God,

¹⁴What is man, that he should be clean?

¹⁵Behold, he puts no trust in his holy ones.

¹⁶how much less one who is abominable and corrupt,

¹⁷“I will show you, listen to me;

¹⁸(which wise men have told by their fathers,

¹⁹to whom alone the land was given,

²⁰the wicked man writhes in pain all his days,

²¹A sound of terrors is in his ears.

²²He doesn’t believe that he will return out of darkness.

²³He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’

²⁴Distress and anguish make him afraid.

²⁵Because he has stretched out his hand against God,

²⁶he runs at him with a stiff neck,

²⁷because he has covered his face with his fatness,

²⁸He has lived in desolate cities,

²⁹He will not be rich, neither will his substance continue,

³⁰He will not depart out of darkness.

³¹Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself,

³²It will be accomplished before his time.

³³He will shake off his unripe grape as the vine,

³⁴For the company of the godless will be barren,

³⁵They conceive mischief and produce iniquity.