Job
34 And Elihu answered
2 “Wise men, hear my words;
give ear to me, men of knowledge;
3 For ears test words
and a palate tastes food.
4 Let us pick out rights
and come to an understanding of what is good,
5 Because Job says ‘I am virtuous
but Deity has taken away my rights;
7 Who is such a man as Job,
who drinks scurrility like water
9 Because he says ‘It is of no advantage to a man
to be on good terms with God.’
10 So, men of sense, hear me:
away with the thought of wrong-doing on Deity’s part,
foul play on Shaddai’s,
11 For he will pay man back appropriately to what he does,
and give each one the experiences proper to the path he takes.
12 In real truth Deity does not do wrong
nor Shaddai play tricks with justice.
15 All creatures of flesh would expire together
and man would go back to clay.
17 Is it even to be that one who hates justice holds sway
or a great right-doer does wrong?
18 He who says ‘reprobate’ to a king
and ‘iniquitous’ to noblemen,
19 Who does not defer to generals
nor recognize a prominent man before a poor man,
because they are all the work of his hands?
20** They die in a moment, at midnight;
he touches prominent men and they pass by,
and removes a formidable fighter without turning a hand.
21 For his eyes are on a man’s courses
and he sees all his steps;
22 There is no darkness, no gloom,
that villains may be veiled in.
24 He breaks great men without an investigation
and sets up others in their place.
25 So he is aware of their works,
and overthrows in the night and they are beaten down.
27 Seeing that they had turned off from following him
and not been regardful of any of his courses,
28 Bringing in before him a poor man’s outcry
and letting him hear the outcry of downtrodden men.
29* But if he is quiet who is to condemn?
or if he veils his face who is to behold him?
be it over a nation or over a man alike,
32 What I do not see, teach me yourself;
if I have done amiss I will not keep on’?
33 Was he to make requital on the basis of your ideas,
that you are vetoing?
For you are to choose, not I;
what you know, speak out!
34 Men of brains will say to me,
and a wise man who hears me,