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35. Elihu Speaks

    ² “Do you think this is just?
   You say, ‘I am in the right, not God.’
³ Yet you ask him, ‘What profit is it to me, Or you
   and what do I gain by not sinning?’

    ⁴ “I would like to reply to you
   and to your friends with you.
⁵ Look up at the heavens and see;
   gaze at the clouds so high above you.
⁶ If you sin, how does that affect him?
   If your sins are many, what does that do to him?
⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give to him,
   or what does he receive from your hand?
⁸ Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself,
   and your righteousness only other people.

    ⁹ “People cry out under a load of oppression;
   they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful.
¹⁰ But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker,
   who gives songs in the night,
¹¹ who teaches us more than he teaches Or night, / who teaches us by the beasts of the earth
   and makes us wiser than Or us wise by the birds in the sky?’
¹² He does not answer when people cry out
   because of the arrogance of the wicked.
¹³ Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea;
   the Almighty pays no attention to it.
¹⁴ How much less, then, will he listen
   when you say that you do not see him,
that your case is before him
   and you must wait for him,
¹⁵ and further, that his anger never punishes
   and he does not take the least notice of wickedness. Symmachus, Theodotion and Vulgate; the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain.
¹⁶ So Job opens his mouth with empty talk;
   without knowledge he multiplies words.”