1. Then Zophar the Naamathite answered:
2. “My troubled thoughts cause me to answer,because I am very upset.
3. You correct me and I am insulted,but I understand how to answer you.
4. “You know how it has been for a long time,ever since people were first put on the earth.
5. The happiness of evil people is brief,and the joy of the wicked lasts only a moment.
6. Their pride may be as high as the heavens,and their heads may touch the clouds,
7. but they will be gone forever, like their own dung.People who knew them will say, ‘Where are they?’
8. They will fly away like a dreamand not be found again;they will be chased away like a vision in the night.
9. Those who saw them will not see them again;the places where they lived will see them no more.
10. Their children will have to pay back the poor,and they will have to give up their wealth.
11. They had the strength of their youth in their bones,but it will lie with them in the dust of death.
12. “Evil may taste sweet in their mouths,and they may hide it under their tongues.