Job 20

¹But Sophar the Naamathite answering, said:

²Therefore my diverse cogitations succeed one another, and my mind is rapt into sundry things.

³The doctrine, wherewith thou reprovest me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding shall answer me.

⁴This I know from the beginning, since man was placed upon the earth,

⁵That the praise of the impious is short, and the joy of the hypocrite as it were for a moment:

⁶If his pride rise up even to the heaven, and his head touch the clouds:

⁷As a dunghill in the end he shall be destroyed, and they that had seen him, shall say: Where is he?

⁸As a dream that flyeth away he shall not be found, he shall pass as a vision by night:

⁹The eye that had seen him, shall not see him, neither shall his place behold him any more.

¹⁰His children shall come to naught with poverty, and his hands shall render him his sorrow.

¹¹His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth, & they shall sleep with him in the dust.

¹²For when evil shall be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.

¹³He will spare it, & not leave it, and will hide it in his throat.

¹⁴His bread in his belly shall be turned into the gall of asps within him.

¹⁵The riches which he hath devoured, he shall vomit out, & God shall draw them forth out of his belly.

¹⁶He shall suck the head of asps, and the viper's tongue shall kill him.

¹⁷(Let him not see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey, & of butter.)

¹⁸He shall be punished for all things that he did, & yet not be consumed: according to the multitude of his inventions so also shall he suffer.

¹⁹Because breaking in he hath made the poor naked: he hath violently taken a house, & built it not.

²⁰Neither is his belly filled: and when he shall have the things he coveted, he cannot possess them.

²¹There remained not of his meat, & therefore nothing shall continue of his goods:

²²When he shall be filled, he shall be straitened, he shall burn, and all sorrow shall fall upon him.

²³Would God his belly were filled, that he may send forth the wrath of his fury upon him, and rain his battle upon him.

²⁴He shall fly weapons of iron, and shall fall upon a bow of brass.

²⁵The sword plucked out, and coming forth of his scabbard, and glistering in his bitterness: the horrible shall go and come upon him.

²⁶All darkness is hid in his secrets: fire that is not kindled shall devour him, he shall be afflicted left in his tabernacle.

²⁷The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise against him.

²⁸The blossom of his house shall be opened, he shall be plucked down in the day of God's fury.

²⁹This is the portion of an impious man from God, & the inheritance of his words from our Lord.