Job 22

Then Eliphaz, Job’s friend from the town of Teman, replied to what Job had said. Eliphaz told him, 2 “No one can do anything to benefit God! No, people can only do things to benefit themselves, and only if they are wise. 3 It does not give Shaddai any extra pleasure if you live in the way you are supposed to live anyway. It does not make him better off if you improve the way you are living. \* 4 God would not be punishing you in this way if you truly honored him. God would not judge you to be guilty for doing that. 5 No, God must be punishing you because you are very wicked. You must have done a great number of evil things. \* 6 You must have unfairly forced poor people to give you things to guarantee that they would pay money back to you. You must have taken the cloaks that they needed to keep them warm. 7 You must not have given water to people who were thirsty. You must not have given food to people who were hungry. 8 You must have refused to help others even though you were a wealthy man who owned a lot of land. You must have enjoyed a life of privilege {without being concerned for others}. \* 9 When widows came to you for help, you must have sent them away without giving them anything. You must have oppressed orphans. 10 Because you did all those things, now you are having difficulties in many different areas of your life. Things are happening all of a sudden that scare you. 11 And so you do not know what to do, as if it had become very dark and you could not see anything. You cannot solve your problems; it is as if you were drowning in a flood of water. \* 12 But God lives high up in the heavens. He looks at the earth from a place that is even higher than the stars. 13 So you should not say, ‘God does not know what people are doing.’ You should not say, ‘Dark clouds keep him from seeing us, so he cannot judge us.’ 14 You should not say, ‘Since he walks on the dome that covers the sky, where there are thick clouds around him, and he can not see what we do.’ \* 15 You should not continue to conduct your life in the way that evil people have done for many years. 16 God makes evil people die suddenly while they are still young. They go away completely, as if a flood had swept them away. 17 Those evil people told God, ‘Leave us alone!’ They also said defiantly, ‘Shaddai can do nothing to harm us!’ \* 18 Even so, God mercifully gave them many things to enjoy. Nevertheless, I want to think completely differently from the way evil people think. 19 When good people see that God punishes evil people, they are glad. People who have not done wrong say that those evil people are getting what they deserve. 20 Those good people say, ‘Now God has destroyed our enemies! It is as if a fire has burned up everything they owned.’ \* 21 So, Job, I urge you to ask God to forgive you. Restore your relationship with him. If you do that, good things will happen to you. 22 Do pay attention to what God teaches you. Meditate on what he says. \* 23 If you come humbly to Shaddai, he will restore you. {God will certainly do that} if you stop doing the evil things that you have been doing. 24 Stop trusting in your wealth. It should be as if you are throwing away your gold, even the finest gold you have, onto the dirt and rocks. 25 If you do that, then Shaddai will be more precious to you than your gold and your silver ever were. \* 26 If you do that, then your relationship with Shaddai will make you very happy. You will be able to approach God confidently. 27 When you pray to God, he will do what you ask him to do. You will have many things to praise God for. 28 The things that you decide to do will be successful. It will be as if a light were shining on the road in front of you so that you knew just where to walk. \* 29 People may cause great difficulties for you. But when you pray and humbly ask God to help you, he will save you. 30 God will even help people who have done wrong things if you pray for them. God will answer your prayer because you will not have done wrong things.” \*