CPDV - Job - 20

20:1  Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying:

20:2  In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas.

20:3  The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me.

20:4  This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth:

20:5  that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment.

20:6  If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds,

20:7  in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: “Where is he?”

20:8  Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare.

20:9  The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him.

20:10  His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him.

20:11  His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust.

20:12  For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.

20:13  He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat.

20:14  His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him.

20:15  The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out.

20:16  He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him.

20:17  (May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.)

20:18  He will be repaid for all he has done, yet he will not be consumed; according to the multitude of his schemes, so also will he suffer.

20:19  For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build.

20:20  And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them.

20:21  Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind.

20:22  When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him.

20:23  May his stomach be filled, so that God may send forth the fury of his wrath to him and may rain down his battle upon him.

20:24  He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass,

20:25  which had been drawn and had issued forth from its sheath, glittering in its bitterness: the horrible ones will go forth and approach over him.

20:26  All darkness has been hidden in his secrecy. A fire that has not been set will devour him; he will be thrown down and forsaken in his tabernacle.

20:27  The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him.

20:28  The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath.

20:29  This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord.