Job Chapter 22
Your explanations don’t make any sense.” Job 21:30-34
1 Eliphaz the Temanite answered.
2 “What benefit can a mortal be to God?
Aren’t even the wise only useful to themselves?
3 Is the Almighty delighted if you’re good?
What good is it to him if you’re perfect?
4 Surely it’s not because you revere him that he’s reproving you,
that he’s bringing judgment against you.
5 Isn’t it more likely that you’re sinful,
that your sins are endless?
6 Maybe you’ve exacted pledges from your friends
and stripped off their clothes as security.
7 Maybe you’ve withheld water from the fainting
and food from the hungry.
8 Maybe you think the land belongs to the powerful,
that only you honorable types have a right to live in it.
9 Maybe you’ve sent widows away with nothing
and crushed the fatherless.
10 So, there are traps everywhere around you,
and panic overwhelms you.
11 Your light’s so dim you can’t see,
and a flood is surging over you.
Job 22:1-11
12 “Isn’t God high in the sky,
higher than the stars?
13 But you say, ‘So how can he see what I’m doing?
Can he judge through such darkness?
14 Dark clouds wrap around him so he can’t see;
he walks on the vaulted sky.’
15 Will you stay on the ancient way
that sinful people have walked,
16 people snatched away before their time,
whose foundations a river washed away?
17 They tell God, ‘Get away!’
‘What good is the Almighty to us?’
18 Yet he’s filled their houses with good things—
(but I stay away from sinners’ counsel).
19 Good people are glad to see the wicked get destroyed;
the innocent laugh and say,
20 ‘Our adversaries are destroyed;
fire has consumed their wealth.’
Job 22:12-20
21 “Submit to God; make peace with him,
and good things will happen to you.
22 Accept his instruction;
take his words to heart.
23 If you come back to the Almighty, he’ll restore you;
if you remove sinfulness far from your home,
24 if you throw your gold in the dust,
the gold of Ophir among the stones in the wadis,
25 then the Almighty will be your gold;
he’ll become your choice silver.
26 Then you’ll delight in the Almighty
and look up at God.
27 You’ll pray to him, and he’ll hear you;
and you’ll keep your vows.
28 When you decide something, it’ll happen;
light will shine on your path.
29 When people put you down, you’ll still be confident
because he saves the humble.
30 He delivers innocent people;
so you’ll be delivered because you have clean hands.”