✧And Elihu went on to say: ✧2“Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am more righteous than God.’ ✧3For you ask, ‘What does it profit me, and what benefit do I gain apart from sin?’ ✧4I will reply to you and to your friends as well. ✧5Look to the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds high above you. ✧6If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? If you multiply your transgressions, what do you do to Him? ✧7If you are righteous, what do you give Him, or what does He receive from your hand? ✧8Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself, and your righteousness only a son of man. ✧9Men cry out under great oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the mighty. ✧10But no one asks, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives us songs in the night, ✧11who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?’ ✧12There they cry out, but He does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. ✧13Surely God does not listen to empty pleas, and the Almighty does not take note of it. ✧14How much less, then, when you say that you do not see Him, that your case is before Him and you must wait for Him, ✧15and further, that in His anger He has not punished or taken much notice of folly! ✧16So Job opens his mouth in vain and multiplies words without knowledge.”