Job 20

¹Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

¹⁸He 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

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

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

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

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

²³May 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

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

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

²⁶All 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

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

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

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