2. “Can a man be of use to God? Yes, can the wise be of use to him?
3. Is it a pleasure to Shaddai if you are righteous, or a gain if you make your ways blameless?
4. Does he reprove you because of your reverence or enter into judgment with you?
5. Is not your wickedness great, and there is no end to your iniquities?
6. “Indeed, you have required a pledge from your family for nothing, and you have stripped off the clothes of the naked.
7. You have given no water for the weary to drink, and you withheld food from the hungry.
8. And the land belongs to the man of power, and the favored lives in it.
9. You have sent widows away empty-handed, and the arms of orphans were crushed.
10. Therefore trapping nets are all around you, and panic suddenly terrifies you,
11. or it is so dark you cannot see, and a flood of water covers you.
12. “Is not God in the height of the heavens? But see how lofty are the highest stars.
13. And you ask, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through deep gloom?
14. Thick clouds are a covering for him, so that he does not see; and he walks about on the dome of heaven.’
15. Will you keep to the way of old that the people of mischief have trod,
16. who were snatched away before their time, whose foundation was washed away by a current?
17. Those who said to God, ‘Turn away from us,’ and ‘What can Shaddai do to us?’
18. Yet he himself filled up their houses with good things, but the schemes of the wicked are repugnant to me.