audio play audio stop

¹ Then Elihu said:

² “Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am in the right, not God.’

³ Yet you ask him, ‘What profit is it to me, Or you and what do I gain by not sinning?’

⁴ “I would like to reply to you and to your friends with you.

⁵ Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you.

⁶ If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him?

⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give to him, or what does he receive from your hand?

⁸ Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself, and your righteousness only other people.

⁹ “People cry out under a load of oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful.

¹⁰ But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,

¹¹ who teaches us more than he teaches Or night, / 11 who teaches us by the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than Or us wise by the birds in the sky?’

¹² He does not answer when people cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked.

¹³ Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea; the Almighty pays no attention to it.

¹⁴ How much less, then, will he listen when you say that you do not see him, that your case is before him and you must wait for him,

¹⁵ and further, that his anger never punishes and he does not take the least notice of wickedness. Symmachus, Theodotion and Vulgate; the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain. ¹⁶ So Job opens his mouth with empty talk; without knowledge he multiplies words.”