Job 20

¹Then Zophar the Naamathite replied:

²“So my anxious thoughts compel me to answer, because of the turmoil within me.

³I have heard a rebuke that insults me, and my understanding prompts a reply.

⁴Do you not know that from antiquity, since man was placed on the earth,

⁵the triumph of the wicked has been brief and the joy of the godless momentary?

⁶Though his arrogance reaches the heavens, and his head touches the clouds,

⁷he will perish forever, like his own dung; those who had seen him will ask, ‘Where is he?’

⁸He will fly away like a dream, never to be found; he will be chased away like a vision in the night.

⁹The eye that saw him will see him no more, and his place will no longer behold him.

¹⁰His sons will seek the favor of the poor, for his own hands must return his wealth.

¹¹The youthful vigor that fills his bones will lie down with him in the dust.

¹²Though evil is sweet in his mouth and he conceals it under his tongue,

¹³though he cannot bear to let it go and keeps it in his mouth,

¹⁴yet in his stomach his food sours into the venom of cobras within him.

¹⁵He swallows wealth but vomits it out; God will force it from his stomach.

He will suck the poison of cobras; the fangs of a viper will kill him.