3. Is it any pleasure or advantage to the Almighty that you are righteous (upright and in right standing with Him)? Or is it gain to Him that you make your ways perfect? [Isa. 62:3; Zech. 2:8; Mal. 3:17; Acts 20:28.]
4. Is it for your [reverential] fear of Him that He [thus] reproves you, that He enters with you into judgment?
5. Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities.
6. For you have taken pledges of your brother for nothing, and stripped the naked of their clothing.
7. You have not given water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. [Matt. 25:42.]
8. But [you, Job] the man with power possessed the land, and the favored and accepted man dwelt in it.
9. You have sent widows away empty-handed, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
10. Therefore snares are round about you, and sudden fear troubles and overwhelms you;
11. Your light is darkened, so that you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you.
12. Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!
13. Therefore you say, How and what does God know [about me]? Can He judge through the thick darkness?
14. Thick clouds are a covering to Him, so that He does not see, and He walks on the vault of the heavens.
15. Will you pay attention and keep to the old way that wicked men trod [in Noah's time], [II Pet. 2:5.]
16. Men who were snatched away before their time, whose foundations were poured out like a stream [during the flood]?
17. They said to God, Depart from us, and, What can the Almighty do for or to us?
18. Yet He filled their houses with good [things]. But the counsel of the ungodly is far from me.
19. The righteous see it and are glad; and the innocent laugh them to scorn [saying],
20. Surely those who rose up against us are cut off, and that which remained to them the fire has consumed.