Job 20

¹ Zophar of Naamath spoke next. He said:

² To this my thoughts are eager to reply: no wonder if I am possessed by impatience.

³ I found these admonitions little to my taste, but my spirit whispers to me how to answer them.

⁴ Do you not know, that since time began and man was set on the earth,

⁵ the triumph of the wicked has always been brief ,and the sinner’s gladness has never lasted long?

⁶ Towering to the sky he may have been, with head touching the clouds;

⁷ but he vanishes, like a phantom, once for all, while those who saw him now ask, ‘Where is he?’

⁸ Like a dream that leaves no trace he takes his flight, like a vision in the night he flies away.

⁹ The eye that looked on him will never see him more, his house nevermore sets eyes on him.

¹⁰ His sons must recoup his victims, and his children pay back his riches.

¹¹ With the vigour of youth his bones were filled, now it lies in the dust with him.

¹² Evil was sweet to his mouth, he hid it beneath his tongue;

¹³ unwilling to let it go, he let it linger on his palate.

¹⁴ Such food goes bad in his belly, working inside him like the poison of a viper.

¹⁵ Now he must bring up all the wealth that he has swallowed, God makes him disgorge it.

¹⁶ He sucked ‘poison of vipers’: and the tongue of the adder kills him.

¹⁷ He will know no more of streams that run with oil, or the torrents of honey and cream.

¹⁸ Gone that glad face at the sight of his gains, those comfortable looks when business was thriving.

¹⁹ Since he once destroyed the huts of poor men, and stole other’s houses when he should have built his own,

²⁰ since his avarice could never be satisfied, now his hoarding will not save him;

²¹ since there was nothing ever escaped his greed, now his prosperity will not last.

²² His abundance at its full, want seizes him, misery descends on him in all its force.

²³ On him God looses all his burning wrath, hurling against his flesh a hail of arrows.

²⁴ No use to run away from the iron armoury, for the bow of bronze will shoot him through.

²⁵ Out through his back an arrow sticks, from his gall a shining point. An arsenal of terrors falls on him,

²⁶ and all that is dark lies in ambush for him. A fire unlit by man devours him, and consumes what is left in his tent.

²⁷ The heavens lay bare his iniquity, the earth takes its stand against him.

²⁸ A flood sweeps his house away, and carries it off in the Day of Wrath.

²⁹ Such is the fate God allots to the wicked, such his inheritance assigned by God.