³ O Eternal One, show us Your mercy. We beg You.
    We are not strangers to contempt and pain.
⁴ We have suffered more than our share
    of ridicule and contempt from self-appointed critics who live easy lives
    and pompously display their own importance.

² Zophar: My anguished thoughts force me to respond
        because I feel an urgency within myself.
³     I caught wind of your words that dishonor me,
        but I am prompted to answer based on my own spirit and understanding.
⁴     Don’t you know how it has always been?
        Since humankind was first put here on the earth,
⁵     The celebrations of the wicked have been brief,
        and the joy of the profane lasts only a moment.
⁶     Even if he were tall enough to reach into the heavens
        and his head were to reach to the clouds,
⁷     He would still perish forever, like his own excrement;
        those who once looked upon him would wonder,
        “Where has he gone?”
⁸     Like a dream, he flies off where no one can find him;
        he is chased away only to vanish into the air like a vision of the night.
⁹     The eyes that saw him before see him no more;
        his home doesn’t ever welcome him again.
¹⁰     His children beg at the door of the poor;
        his hands render his wealth back to them.
¹¹     The vigor of youth had a home, a residence in his bones,
        but it lies down in the dust with him.