Job 15:1-21 ▼

1 Then Eliphaz the Thaemanite answered and said,

2 Will a wise man give for answer a mere breath of wisdom? and does he fill up the pain of his belly,

3 reasoning with improper sayings, and with words wherein is no profit?

4 Hast not thou moreover cast off fear, and accomplished such words before the Lord?

5 Thou art guilty by the words of thy mouth, neither hast thou discerned the words of the mighty.

6 Let thine own mouth, and not me, reprove thee: and thy lips shall testify against thee.

7 What! art thou the first man that was born? or wert thou established before the hills?

8 Or hast thou heard the ordinance of the Lord? or has God used thee as his counsellor? and has wisdom come only to thee?

9 For what knowest thou, that, we know not? or what understandest thou, which we do not also?

10 Truly among us are both the old and very aged man, more advanced in days than thy father.

11 Thou hast been scourged for but few of thy sins: thou hast spoken haughtily and extravagantly.

12 What has thine heart dared? or what have thine eyes aimed at ,

13 that thou hast vented thy rage before the Lord, and delivered such words from thy mouth?

14 For who, being a mortal, is such that he shall be blameless? or, who that is born of a woman, that he should be just?

15 Forasmuch as he trusts not his saints; and the heaven is not pure before him.

16 Alas then, abominable and unclean is man, drinking unrighteousness as a draught.

17 But I will tell thee, hearken to me; I will tell thee now what I have seen;

18 things wise men say, and their fathers have not hidden.

19 To them alone the earth was given, and no stranger came upon them.

20 All the life of the ungodly is spent in care, and the years granted to the oppressor are numbered.

21 And his terror is in his ears: just when he seems to be at peace, his overthrow will come.