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Job 34
Job
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Chapter 34
The three Sages have failed to justify God
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,
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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,
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that the poor have cried out to him against them and the wailing of the humble has assailed his ears,
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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,
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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 –
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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.
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For to sin he adds rebellion, calling justice into question in our midst and heaping abuse on God.’
Chapters of Job
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