Job’s sins
22 Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:
2 Can a human being be useful to God?
Can an intelligent person bring profit?
3 Does the Almighty delight in your innocence?
Does he gain when you perfect your ways?
4 Does he rebuke you for your piety,
bring you in for judgment?
5 Isn’t your wickedness massive,
your iniquity endless?
6 You have taken payments from your family for no reason;
stripped the naked, leaving no clothes;
7 denied water to the thirsty,
withheld bread from the starving.
(8 The powerful own land;
the favored live in it.)
9 You have sent widows away empty;
crushed orphans’ resources.
10 For this reason, snares surround you;
sudden dread brings panic to you
11 or a darkness that you can’t see;
rushing water will cover you.
God’s activity
12 Isn’t God in the heights of heaven;
see how high the topmost stars are?
13 You say: “What does God know?
Can he judge through thick clouds?
14 Clouds conceal him so he can’t see
while he walks on heaven’s rim.”
15 Will you keep the ancient way
traveled by sinful persons,
16 who were snatched prematurely
when a river flooded their foundations,
17 who say to God, “Turn away from us;
what can the Almighty do to us?”
18 Yet he filled their houses with good things;
a sinner’s logic is beyond me.
19 The righteous see and rejoice;
the innocent mock them:
20 our enemies are certainly cut off;
fire will devour what’s left of them.
Turn to God
21 Get along well with God and be at peace;
from this something good will come to you.
22 Receive instruction from his mouth;
put his words in your mind.
23 If you return to the Almighty,[a] you will be restored;
if you keep wrongdoing out of your tent.
24 Lay your prized possession in the dust,
your gold from Ophir on a rock in a desert streambed.
25 The Almighty will be your prized possession,
silver piled up for you.
26 Then you will take pleasure in the Almighty;
lift up your face to God.
27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you;
you will fulfill your solemn promises.
28 If you decree something, it will stand;
light will shine on your ways.
29 When they’re humbled, you will say: “Cheer up;
God will rescue the lowly.
30 He will deliver the guilty;
they will be saved by your pure hands.”