1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
2. Can a man be profitable to God?Can a wise man be profitable to him?
3. Does it please the Almighty that you are just?Does he gain if your ways are perfect?
4. Is it because of your piety that he reproves you—that he enters into judgment with you?
5. Is not your wickedness great,your iniquity endless?
6. You keep your relatives’ goods in pledge unjustly,leave them stripped naked of their clothing.
7. To the thirsty you give no water to drink,and from the hungry you withhold bread;
8. As if the land belonged to the powerful,and only the privileged could dwell in it!
9. You sent widows away empty-handed,and the resources of orphans are destroyed.
10. Therefore snares are round about you,sudden terror makes you panic,
11. Or darkness—you cannot see!A deluge of waters covers you.
12. Does not God, in the heights of the heavens,behold the top of the stars, high though they are?
13. Yet you say, “What does God know?Can he judge through the thick darkness?
14. Clouds hide him so that he cannot seeas he walks around the circuit of the heavens!”
15. Do you indeed keep to the ancient waytrodden by the worthless?
16. They were snatched before their time;their foundations a river swept away.