✧Elihu also continued, and said, ✧2“Bear with me a little, and I will show you; for I still have something to say on God’s behalf. ✧3I will get my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. ✧4For truly my words are not false. One who is perfect in knowledge is with you. ✧5“Behold, God is mighty, and doesn’t despise anyone. He is mighty in strength of understanding. ✧6He doesn’t preserve the life of the wicked, but gives justice to the afflicted. ✧7He doesn’t withdraw his eyes from the righteous, but with kings on the throne, he sets them forever, and they are exalted. ✧8If they are bound in fetters, and are taken in the cords of afflictions, ✧9then he shows them their work, and their transgressions, that they have behaved themselves proudly. ✧10He also opens their ears to instruction, and commands that they return from iniquity. ✧11If they listen and serve him, they will spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures. ✧12But if they don’t listen, they will perish by the sword; they will die without knowledge. ✧13“But those who are godless in heart lay up anger. They don’t cry for help when he binds them. ✧14They die in youth. Their life perishes among the unclean. ✧15He delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and opens their ear in oppression. ✧16Yes, he would have allured you out of distress, into a wide place, where there is no restriction. That which is set on your table would be full of fatness. ✧17“But you are full of the judgment of the wicked. Judgment and justice take hold of you. ✧18Don’t let riches entice you to wrath, neither let the great size of a bribe turn you aside. ✧19Would your wealth sustain you in distress, or all the might of your strength? ✧20Don’t desire the night, when people are cut off in their place. ✧21Take heed, don’t regard iniquity; for you have chosen this rather than affliction. ✧22Behold, God is exalted in his power. Who is a teacher like him? ✧23Who has prescribed his way for him? Or who can say, ‘You have committed unrighteousness’? ✧24“Remember that you magnify his work, about which men have sung. ✧25All men have looked on it. Man sees it afar off. ✧26Behold, God is great, and we don’t know him. The number of his years is unsearchable. ✧27For he draws up the drops of water, which distill in rain from his vapor, ✧28which the skies pour down and which drop on man abundantly. ✧29Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds and the thunderings of his pavilion? ✧30Behold, he spreads his light around him. He covers the bottom of the sea. ✧31For by these he judges the people. He gives food in abundance. ✧32He covers his hands with the lightning, and commands it to strike the mark. ✧33Its noise tells about him, and the livestock also, concerning the storm that comes up.