Job 27

Job kept speaking to his three friends. He said, 2 “I will promise you something as surely as God exists, even though he has treated me unfairly. I will promise you something as surely as Shaddai exists, even though he has made my life so unpleasant. 3 I will insist on it for as long as I am alive. Yes, for as long as I am still breathing, I will insist on it. \* 4 I promise that I will not say the wrong thing! I promise that I will not say anything to deceive anyone! 5 And so I will never say that what you three have said about me is true. Until the day that I die, I will insist that I have been living as God wants people to live. \* 6 I will insist that I am innocent. I will never say anything different. That way, for as long as I live, I will not feel badly about saying something that was not true. 7 I want to be just the opposite of an evil person. I want to disagree with the way anyone who is a bad person is living. \* 8 I want to be the opposite of an evil person because when God decides it is time for that person to die, he can only expect that God will then punish him for the wrong things that he has done. 9 When evil people are in trouble, God does not rescue them when they pray for help. 10 Evil people are not happy about what Shaddai does. They do not speak with God in prayer in good times as well as in bad times. \* 11 I need to teach you three something about how God actually deals with the people of this world. 12 You three have certainly seen for yourselves how God treats people. So you should not have been telling me things that have made so little sense. \* 13 I will tell you how God punishes evil people. This is what Shaddai does to those who mistreat others: 14 Even if they have many children, those children will die in wars, or they will die because they do not have enough food to eat. \* 15 Any children who are still alive after their evil parents die will perish from diseases. Not even the wife of an evil man will mourn for him if he dies. 16 Sometimes evil people accumulate a large amount of money and they acquire many valuable articles of clothing. 17 But even if evil people become rich, they will die, and then righteous people will get their clothes. Honest people will get their money and share it with one another. \* 18 The houses that they build are as weak as spider webs. Their houses are flimsy, like the huts that watchmen live in while they guard people’s fields. 19 God makes evil people lose their money. It is as if they are rich when they go to bed one night, but the next morning they wake up to find that their money is all gone. \* 20 When evil people realize that God is punishing them, they become very afraid, as if those fears were water in which they were drowning. God soon destroys the evil people, as if a whirlwind carried them away in the night. 21 It is as if a windstorm from the desert picks them up and carries them away from their homes. No one ever sees them again. \* 22 It is as if a wind like that blows steadily against them while they are running away, trying to escape from its force. 23 It is as if such a wind were clapping its hands at them to mock them. It is as if such a wind blew them out of their houses and stayed there laughing at them. \*