✧Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, ✧2“Should a wise man answer with vain knowledge, and fill himself with the east wind? ✧3Should he reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches with which he can do no good? ✧4Yes, you do away with fear, and hinder devotion before God. ✧5For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the language of the crafty. ✧6Your own mouth condemns you, and not I. Yes, your own lips testify against you. ✧7“Are you the first man who was born? Or were you brought out before the hills? ✧8Have you heard the secret counsel of God? Do you limit wisdom to yourself? ✧9What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand which is not in us? ✧10With us are both the gray-headed and the very aged men, much older than your father. ✧11Are the consolations of God too small for you, even the word that is gentle toward you? ✧12Why does your heart carry you away? Why do your eyes flash, ✧13that you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth? ✧14What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? ✧15Behold, he puts no trust in his holy ones. Yes, the heavens are not clean in his sight; ✧16how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water! ✧17“I will show you, listen to me; that which I have seen I will declare ✧18(which wise men have told by their fathers, and have not hidden it; ✧19to whom alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them): ✧20the wicked man writhes in pain all his days, even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor. ✧21A sound of terrors is in his ears. In prosperity the destroyer will come on him. ✧22He doesn’t believe that he will return out of darkness. He is waited for by the sword. ✧23He wanders abroad for bread, saying, ‘Where is it?’ He knows that the day of darkness is ready at his hand. ✧24Distress and anguish make him afraid. They prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle. ✧25Because he has stretched out his hand against God, and behaves himself proudly against the Almighty, ✧26he runs at him with a stiff neck, with the thick shields of his bucklers, ✧27because he has covered his face with his fatness, and gathered fat on his thighs. ✧28He has lived in desolate cities, in houses which no one inhabited, which were ready to become heaps. ✧29He will not be rich, neither will his substance continue, neither will their possessions be extended on the earth. ✧30He will not depart out of darkness. The flame will dry up his branches. He will go away by the breath of God’s mouth. ✧31Let him not trust in emptiness, deceiving himself, for emptiness will be his reward. ✧32It will be accomplished before his time. His branch will not be green. ✧33He will shake off his unripe grape as the vine, and will cast off his flower as the olive tree. ✧34For the company of the godless will be barren, and fire will consume the tents of bribery. ✧35They conceive mischief and produce iniquity. Their heart prepares deceit.”