8. Do you listen in on God’s secret council?Do you limit wisdom to yourself?
9. What do you know that we don’t know?What do you understand that we don’t understand?
10. The gray-haired and the aged are on our side,men far older than your father.
11. Are God’s consolations too trivial for you;or a word spoken in gentleness to you?
12. Why has your heart carried you away,and why do your eyes flash,
13. when you turn your rage against Godand allow such words to escape from your mouth?
14. What is man that he should be pure,or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
15. If God places no trust in his holy ones,if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes,
16. how much less man, who is abominable and corrupt,who drinks in evil like water!
17. “I will explain to you; listen to me,and what I have seen, I will declare,
18. what wise men declare,hiding nothing, from the tradition of their ancestors,
19. to whom alone the land was givenwhen no foreigner passed among them.
20. All his days the wicked man suffers torment,throughout the number of the years that are stored up for the tyrant.
21. Terrifying sounds fill his ears;in a time of peace marauders attack him.
22. He does not expect to escape from darkness;he is marked for the sword;
23. he wanders about – food for vultures;he knows that the day of darkness is at hand.
24. Distress and anguish terrify him;they prevail against him like a king ready to launch an attack,
25. for he stretches out his hand against God,and vaunts himself against the Almighty,
26. defiantly charging against himwith a thick, strong shield!