en_cjb - Job 20 - Ozzuu Bible

¹ Tzofar the Na‘amati replied,

² “My thoughts are pressing me to answer; I feel such an urge to speak!

³ I have heard reproof that outrages me, but a spirit past my understanding gives me a reply.

⁴ “Don’t you know that ever since time began, ever since humans were placed on earth,

⁵ that the triumph of the wicked is always short-lived, and the joy of the ungodly is gone in a moment?

⁶ His pride may mount to the heavens, his head may touch the clouds;

⁷ but he will vanish completely, like his own dung — those who used to see him will ask, ‘Where is he?’

⁸ Like a dream he flies off and is not found again; like a vision in the night he is chased away.

⁹ The eye which once saw him will see him no more, his place will not behold him again.

¹⁰ His children will have to pay back the poor; his hands will restore their wealth.

¹¹ His bones may be filled with [the vigor of] his youth, but it will join him lying in the dust.

¹² “Wickedness may taste sweet in his mouth, he may savor and roll it around on his tongue,

¹³ he may linger over it and not let it go but keep it there in his mouth —

¹⁴ yet in his stomach his food goes bad, it works inside him like snake venom;

¹⁵ the wealth he swallows he vomits back up; God makes him disgorge it.

¹⁶ He sucks the poison of asps, the viper’s fangs will kill him.

¹⁷ He will not enjoy the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and cream.

¹⁸ He will have to give back what he toiled for; he won’t get to swallow it down — to the degree that he acquired wealth, he won’t get to enjoy it.

¹⁹ “For he crushed and abandoned the poor, seizing houses he did not build,

²⁰ because his appetite would not let him rest, in his greed he let nothing escape;

²¹ nothing is left that he did not devour; therefore his well-being will not last.

²² With all needs satisfied, he will be in distress; the full force of misery will come over him.

²³ “This is what will fill his belly! — [God] will lay on him all his burning anger and make it rain over him, into his insides.

²⁴ If he flees from the weapon of iron, the bow of bronze will pierce him through —

²⁵ he pulls the arrow out of his back, the shining tip comes out from his innards; terrors come upon him.

²⁶ “Total darkness is laid up for his treasures, a fire fanned by no one will consume him, and calamity awaits what is left in his tent.

²⁷ The heavens will reveal his guilt, and the earth will rise up against him.

²⁸ The income of his household will be carried off; his goods will flow away on the day of his wrath.

²⁹ This is God’s reward for the wicked, the heritage God decrees for him.”