Job 34

¹ Elihu continued his speech. He said:

² You men of wisdom, listen to my words: lend me your ears, you learned men.

³ The ear is a judge of speeches, just as the palate can tell one food from another.

⁴ Let us discover together where justice lies, and settle among us what is best.

⁵ Now Job has said, ‘I am in the right, and God refuses to grant me justice.

⁶ The judge who judges me is ill-disposed, and though I have not sinned, my wounds are past all cure.’

⁷ Are there many men like Job, who drink scurrility like water,

⁸ who keep company with evil-doers, and march in step with the wicked?

⁹ Did he not say it was useless for man to try to please God?

¹⁰ Listen then to me, like intelligent men. So far is God removed from wickedness, and Shaddai from injustice,

¹¹ that he requites a man for what he does, treating each one as his way of life deserves.

¹² God never does wrong, do not doubt that! Shaddai does not deflect the course of right.

¹³ It is not as if someone else had given him the earth in trust, or confided the whole universe to his care.

¹⁴ Were he to recall his breath, to draw his breathing back into himself,

¹⁵ things of flesh would perish all together, and man would return to dust.

¹⁶ If you have any intelligence, listen to this, and lend your ear to what I have to say.

¹⁷ Could an enemy of justice ever govern? Would you dare condemn the Just One, the Almighty,

¹⁸ who can tell kings that they are good for nothing, and treat noblemen like criminals,

¹⁹ who shows no partiality to princes and makes no distinction between the rich and the poor, all alike being made by his own hands?

²⁰ They die, they are gone in an instant, great though they are, they perish in the dead of night: it costs him no effort to remove a tyrant.

²¹ His eyes, you see, keep watch on all men’s ways, and he observes their every step.

²² Not darkness, nor the deepest shadow, can hide the wrong-doer.

²³ He serves no writ on men summoning them to appear before God’s court:

²⁴ he smashes great men’s power without enquiry and sets up others in their places.

²⁵ He knows well enough what they are about, and one fine night he throws them down for men to trample on.

²⁶ He strikes them down for their wickedness, and makes them prisoners for all to see.

²⁷ You may say, ‘They have so turned from him, and ignored his ways,

²⁸ that the poor have cried out to him against them and the wailing of the humble has assailed his ears,

²⁹ Yet he is unmoved, and nothing can touch him; he hides his face and nobody can see him’. But nonetheless he does take pity on nations and on men,

³⁰ freeing the godless man from the meshes of distress.

³¹ If such a man says to God, ‘I was led astray, I will sin no more.

³² If I did wrong, tell me about it, if I have been unjust, I will be so no more –

³³ in such a case, do you think he ought to punish him, you who reject his decisions? Since it is you who make this choice, not I, let us all share your knowledge!

³⁴ But this is what all sensible folk will say, and any wise man among my hearers,

³⁵ ‘There is no wisdom in Job’s speech, his words lack sense.

³⁶ Put him unsparingly to the proof since his retorts are the same as those that the wicked make.

³⁷ For to sin he adds rebellion, calling justice into question in our midst and heaping abuse on God.’