Job 27
Job continues to speak
1 Job continued to speak. This is what he said:
2 ‘Almighty God has not been fair to me.
He has caused my life to be very sad.
As surely as he lives, I promise this:
3 As long as God's Spirit gives me life,
4 I will never speak any lies.
I will always be honest.
5 I will never agree that you, my three friends, are right.
Until the day of my death,
I will continue to say what I know is right.
6 I will never agree that I am guilty.
During all of my life,
my thoughts do not say that I am doing anything wrong.
7 I pray that God will punish my enemies
as he punishes all wicked people.
They do bad things to me,
so they deserve punishment.
8 When God chooses to remove wicked people,
they cannot hope for any good thing.
God will cause them to die.
9 When they are in trouble and they pray for help,
God will not listen to them.
10 People like that are not happy that Almighty God is their friend.
They do not like to pray to him all the time.
11 I will teach you about the power of Almighty God.
I will explain to you what he is thinking.
12 You yourselves have all seen what God has done.
So you should stop saying all these useless things!
13 I will tell you what Almighty God does to wicked people.
He punishes cruel people as they deserve.
14 Wicked people may have many children,
but they will die in war.
Their children will never have enough food to eat.
15 Illness will kill any children who continue to live.
Their widows will not weep when they are dead.
16 Wicked people may have lots of money.
They may have silver like heaps of sand.
They may have more clothes than they could ever wear.
17 But one day righteous people will wear those clothes.
Honest people will share the silver among themselves.
18 The houses that wicked people build are not strong.
They are as weak as a spider's web,
27:18A spider is small, like an insect. It uses very thin strings (threads) to make a web. It catches insects in the web for its food.
or a shepherd's hut,
19 Their riches quickly disappear.
They are rich when they go to sleep,
but poor when they wake up.
20 Troubles come to them like a flood of water,
and they are very afraid.
A storm comes in the night to carry them away.
21 The east wind picks them up and takes then far away.
27:21The wind in verses 21 to 23 is probably a picture of the troubles that come to wicked people.
It removes them from their homes.
22 It is a strong wind that hits wicked people
and it never stops.
It continues to beat them as they try to escape.
23 The cruel wind laughs at them
as they run away in fear.’
