Job 27

¹ And Job continued his solemn discourse. He said:

² I swear by the living God who denies me justice, by Shaddai who has turned my life sour,

³ that as long as a shred of life is left in me, and the breath of God breathes in my nostrils,

⁴ my lips shall never speak untruth, nor any lie be found on my tongue.

⁵ Far from ever admitting you to be in the right: I will maintain my innocence to my dying day.

⁶ I take my stand on my integrity, I will not stir: my conscience gives me no cause to blush for my life.

⁷ May my enemy meet a criminal’s end, and my opponent suffer with the guilty.

⁸ For what hope, after all, has the godless when he prays, and raises his soul to God?

⁹ Is God likely to hear his cries when disaster descends on him?

¹⁰ Did he make Shaddai all his delight, calling on him at every turn?

¹¹ No: I am showing you how God’s power works, making no secret of Shaddai’s designs.

¹² And if you all had understood them for yourselves, you would not have wasted your breath in empty words.

¹³ Here is the fate that God has in store for the wicked, and the inheritance with which Shaddai endows the man of violence.

¹⁴ A sword awaits his sons, however many they may be, and their children after them will go unfed.

¹⁵ Plague will bury those he leaves behind him, and their widows will have no chance to mourn them.

¹⁶ He may collect silver like dust, and gather fine clothes like clay.

¹⁷ Let him gather! Some good man will wear them, while his silver is shared among the innocent.

¹⁸ He has built himself a spider’s web, made himself a watchman’s shack.

¹⁹ He goes to bed a rich man, but never again: he wakes to find not a penny left.

²⁰ Terrors attack him in broad daylight, and at night a whirlwind sweeps him off.

²¹ An east wind picks him up and drags him away, snatching him up from his homestead.

²² Pitilessly he is turned into a target, and forced to flee from the hands that menace him.

²³ His downfall is greeted with applause, and hissing meets him on every side.