1<\/sup>Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying:<\/span> <\/p>\n 2<\/sup>In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas.<\/span> <\/p>\n 3<\/sup>The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me.<\/span> <\/p>\n 4<\/sup>This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth:<\/span> <\/p>\n 5<\/sup>that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment.<\/span> <\/p>\n 6<\/sup>If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds,<\/span> <\/p>\n 7<\/sup>in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: “Where is he?”<\/span> <\/p>\n 8<\/sup>Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare.<\/span> <\/p>\n 9<\/sup>The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 10<\/sup>His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 11<\/sup>His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust.<\/span> <\/p>\n 12<\/sup>For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.<\/span> <\/p>\n 13<\/sup>He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat.<\/span> <\/p>\n 14<\/sup>His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 15<\/sup>The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out.<\/span> <\/p>\n 16<\/sup>He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 17<\/sup>(May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.)<\/span> <\/p>\n 18<\/sup>He will be repaid for all he has done, yet he will not be consumed; according to the multitude of his schemes, so also will he suffer.<\/span> <\/p>\n 19<\/sup>For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build.<\/span> <\/p>\n 20<\/sup>And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them.<\/span> <\/p>\n 21<\/sup>Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind.<\/span> <\/p>\n 22<\/sup>When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 23<\/sup>May his stomach be filled, so that God may send forth the fury of his wrath to him and may rain down his battle upon him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 24<\/sup>He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass,<\/span> <\/p>\n 25<\/sup>which had been drawn and had issued forth from its sheath, glittering in its bitterness: the horrible ones will go forth and approach over him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 26<\/sup>All darkness has been hidden in his secrecy. A fire that has not been set will devour him; he will be thrown down and forsaken in his tabernacle.<\/span> <\/p>\n 27<\/sup>The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him.<\/span> <\/p>\n 28<\/sup>The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath.<\/span> <\/p>\n 29<\/sup>This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord.<\/span> <\/p>\n