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Job 8
The unswerving course of God’s justice
1 Bildad of Shuah spoke next. He said:
2 Is there no end to these words of yours, to your long-winded blustering?
3 Can God deflect the course of right or Shaddai falsify justice?
4 If your sons sinned against him, they have paid for their sins;
8:6a so you too, if so pure and honest,
5 must now seek God, plead with Shaddai.
8:6b Without delay he will restore his favour to you, will see that the good man’s house is rebuilt.
7 Your former state will seem to you as nothing beside your new prosperity.
8 Question the generation that has passed, meditate on the experience of its fathers.
9 We sons of yesterday know nothing; our life on earth passes like a shadow.
10 But they will teach you, they will tell you, and these are the words they will speak from the heart,
11 ‘Does papyrus flourish, except in marshes? Without water, can the rushes grow?
12 Pluck them even at their freshest: fastest of all plants they wither.
13 Such is the fate of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless man.
14 His trust is only a thread, his assurance a spider’s web.
15 Let him lean on his house; it will not stand firm; cling to it, it will not hold.
16 Like some lush plant in the sunlight, he sprouted his early shoots over the garden;
17 but his roots were twined in a heap of stones, he drew his life among the rocks.
18 Snatch him from his bed, and it denies it ever saw him.
19 Now he rots on the roadside, and from that soil spring others.
20 Believe me, God neither spurns a stainless man, nor lends his aid to the evil.
21 Once again your cheeks will fill with laughter, from your lips will break a cry of joy.
22 Your enemies shall be covered with shame, and the tent of the wicked folk shall vanish.’