Zophar's proclamation about the wicked
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Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying:
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In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas.
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The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me.(a)
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This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth:
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that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment.
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If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds,
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in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: “Where is he?”(b)
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Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare.
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The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him.
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His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him.
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His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust.
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For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.
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He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat.
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His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him.
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The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out.
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He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him.
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(May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.)
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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.(c)
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For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build.
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And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them.
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Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind.
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When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him.
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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.
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He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass,(d)
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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.
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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.
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The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him.
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The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath.
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This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord.
Footnotes