Job 5

¹ Make your appeal then. Will you find an answer? To which of the Holy Ones will you turn?

² Resentment kills the senseless, and anger brings death to the fool.

³ I myself have seen how such a one took root, until a swift curse fell on his House.

⁴ His sons at a single blow lose their prop and stay, ruined at the gate[*a] with no one to defend them;

⁵ their harvest goes to feed the hungry, God snatches it from their mouths, and thirsty men hanker after their goods.

⁶ Grief does not grow out of the earth, nor sorrow spring from the ground.

⁷ It is man who breeds trouble for himself as surely as eagles fly to the height.

⁸ If I were as you are, I should appeal to God, and lay my case before him.

⁹ His works are great, past all reckoning, marvels, beyond all counting.

¹⁰ He sends down rain to the earth, pours down water on the field.

¹¹ If his will is to rescue the downcast, or raise the afflicted to the heights of joy,

¹² he wrecks the plans of the artful, and brings to naught their intrigues.

¹³ He traps the crafty in the snare of their own shrewdness, turns subtle counsellors to idiots.

¹⁴ In daylight they come against darkness, and grope their way as if noon were night.

¹⁵ He rescues the bankrupt from their jaws, and the poor man from the hands of the violent.

¹⁶ Thus the wretched can hope again and wickedness must shut its mouth.

¹⁷ Happy indeed the man whom God corrects! Then do not refuse this lesson from Shaddai.[*b]

¹⁸ For he who wounds is he who soothes the sore, and the hand that hurts is the hand that heals.

¹⁹ Six times he will deliver you from sorrow, and the seventh, evil shall not touch you.

²⁰ In time of famine, he will save you from death, and in wartime from the stroke of the sword.

²¹ You shall be safe from the lash of the tongue, and see the approach of the brigand without fear.

²² You shall laugh at drought and frost, and have no fear of the beasts of the earth.

²³ You shall have a pact with the stones of the field, and live in amity with wild beasts.

²⁴ You shall find your tent secure, and your sheepfold untouched when you come.

²⁵ You shall see your descendants multiply, your offspring grow like the grass in the fields.

²⁶ In ripe age you shall go to the grave, like a wheatsheaf stacked in due season.

²⁷ All this, we have observed: it is true. Heed it, and do so to your profit.