Job 8

2 How long will you go on saying such things?

The breath of your mouth is a great wind of words.

3 Will the Lord do wrong when he judges?

Will the one who made all things twist what is right?

4 If your sons sinned in front of him,

he sent them off into the hand of their own lawlessness.

5 But you — rise at dawn and make your plea to the Lord Almighty.

6 If you are clean and true, he will listen to your plea,

and he will give you back a dwelling of righteousness.

7 So then your beginnings will be small,

and what you end with will be past all telling.

8 Ask the first generation;

search out the line of the fathers.

9 We are of yesterday, and we know nothing;

our life on the earth is a shadow.

10 Will they not teach you and tell you,

and bring words out of their heart?

11 Does papyrus flourish where there is no water?

Does the marsh reed grow tall without a drink?

12 While it is still on its root and not yet cut,

before it drinks, does not every green plant dry up?

13 So it will be in the end for all who forget the Lord;

the hope of the ungodly will perish.

14 His house will be left with no one in it,

and his tent will turn out to be a spider’s web.

15 If he props his house up, it will not stand;

when he takes hold of it, it will not hold.

16 For he is moist under the sun,

and his shoot comes out of his own rot.

17 He lies down on a heap of stones

and makes his life among the flints.

18 If he is swallowed down, the place will deny him.

Have you not seen such things —

19 that this is how the ungodly is overturned?

And out of the earth he will make another one spring up.

20 The Lord will never turn away the innocent man,

and he will take no gift from the ungodly.

21 He will fill the mouth of the truthful with laughter,

and their lips with thanksgiving.

22 Their enemies will be dressed in shame,

and the dwelling of the ungodly will be gone.