| 1 | Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying: |
| 2 | In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas. |
| 3 | The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me. |
| 4 | This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth: |
| 5 | that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment. |
| 6 | If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds, |
| 7 | in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: "Where is he?" |
| 8 | Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare. |
| 9 | The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him. |
| 10 | His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him. |
| 11 | His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust. |
| 12 | For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue. |
| 13 | He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat. |
| 14 | His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him. |
| 15 | The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out. |
| 16 | He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him. |
| 17 | (May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.) |
| 18 | He will be repaid for all he has done, yet he will not be consumed; according to the multitude of his schemes, so also will he suffer. |
| 19 | For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build. |
| 20 | And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them. |
| 21 | Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind. |
| 22 | When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him. |
| 23 | May his stomach be filled, so that God may send forth the fury of his wrath to him and may rain down his battle upon him. |
| 24 | He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass, |
| 25 | which had been drawn and had issued forth from its sheath, glittering in its bitterness: the horrible ones will go forth and approach over him. |
| 26 | All darkness has been hidden in his secrecy. A fire that has not been set will devour him; he will be thrown down and forsaken in his tabernacle. |
| 27 | The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him. |
| 28 | The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God's wrath. |
| 29 | This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord. |
