1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
2 "Does a wise man answer with knowledge of wind and fill his belly with the east wind,
3 arguing with talk that does not profit, with words that do no good?
4 You are even undermining the fear of God and cutting short devotion before God.
5 For your iniquity instructs your mouth, and you pick the tongue of the cunning.
6 It is your own mouth that condemns you, not I; your own lips bear witness against you.
7 Were you born the first of mankind? Were you brought to birth before the hills?
8 Do you listen in at God's council, and keep wisdom all to yourself?
9 What do you know that we do not? What do you grasp that is not with us too?
10 Gray hair and old age are here among us, men older in days than your father.
11 Are God's consolations too little for you, a word dealt gently with you?
12 Why does your heart sweep you away, and why do your eyes flash,
13 so that you turn your spirit against God and send words like these out of your mouth?
14 What is man, that he should be clean, or one born of woman, that he should be in the right?
15 See, he does not rely on his holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in his eyes;
16 how much less one who is loathsome and corrupt, a man who drinks wrongdoing like water!
17 I will tell you; hear me, and what I have seen I will recount,
18 what wise men have made known and did not conceal, received from their fathers,
19 to whom alone the land was given, when no stranger went about among them:
20 All his days the wicked man is in torment, through the number of years stored up for the tyrant.
21 The noise of terrors fills his ears; while he is at peace the destroyer falls on him.
22 He has no faith that he will come back out of darkness, and he is watched for by the sword.
23 He roams about for bread: 'Where is it?' He knows the day of darkness is close at hand.
24 Distress and anguish dismay him; they overwhelm him like a king set for the attack,
25 because he stretched out his hand against God and made himself great against the Almighty,
26 charging at him with outstretched neck, with the thick bosses of his shields,
27 because he has covered his face with his fatness and laid fat upon his thighs,
28 and has dwelt in ruined cities, in houses no one should inhabit, marked out to become rubble.
29 He will not grow rich, his wealth will not stand, and his yield will not bend to the ground.
30 He will not get away from darkness; a flame will wither his shoots, and by the breath of his mouth he will be carried away.
31 Let him not rely on what is empty, led astray, for emptiness will be his recompense.
32 Before his day it will be paid in full, and his palm frond will not be green.
33 He will drop his sour grapes like a vine, and shed his blossom like an olive tree.
34 For the band of the godless is sterile, and fire devours the tents of the bribe.
35 They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity, and their belly hatches deceit."