Job 35

¹ Elihu continued his speech. He said:

² Do you presume to maintain that you are in the right, to insist on your innocence before God,

³ even to ask him, ‘How does it affect you, what harm has it done you if I have sinned?’

⁴ Well then, this is how I will answer you, and your friends as well.

⁵ Look up at the skies, look at them well, and see how high the clouds are above you.

⁶ If you sin, what do you achieve against him? If you heap up crimes, what is the injury you do him?

⁷ If you are just, what do you give him, what benefit does he receive at your hands?

⁸ Your fellow men are the ones to suffer from your crimes, humanity is the gainer if you are good.

⁹ When people groan under the weight of oppression, or cry out under the tyranny of the mighty,

¹⁰ no one thinks to ask, ‘Where is God, my maker, who makes glad songs ring out at dead of night,

¹¹ who makes us cleverer than the earth’s wild beasts, wiser than the birds in the sky?’

¹² Then they cry aloud, but he does not answer because of man’s base pride.

¹³ How idle to maintain that God is deaf, that Shaddai notices nothing!

¹⁴ You even claim, ‘He does not see me: my cause is exposed before him, and yet I wait and wait’.

¹⁵ Or even, ‘His anger never punishes, he does not seem to know of men’s rebellion’.

¹⁶ Hence when Job opens his mouth, it is for idle talk: his spate of words comes out of ignorance.