Job Answers Zophar

Put Your Ear to the Earth

12 1-3 Job answered:

“I’m sure you speak for all the experts,
    and when you die there’ll be no one left to tell us how to live.
But don’t forget that I also have a brain—
    I don’t intend to play second fiddle to you.
    It doesn’t take an expert to know these things.

4-6 “I’m ridiculed by my friends:
    ‘So that’s the man who had conversations with God!’
Ridiculed without mercy:
    ‘Look at the man who never did wrong!’
It’s easy for the well-to-do to point their fingers in blame,
    for the well-fixed to pour scorn on the strugglers.
Crooks reside safely in high-security houses,
    insolent blasphemers live in luxury;
    they’ve bought and paid for a god who’ll protect them.

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But I have a mind as well as you;
    I am not inferior to you.
    Who does not know all these things?(A)

“I have become a laughingstock(B) to my friends,(C)
    though I called on God and he answered(D)
    a mere laughingstock, though righteous and blameless!(E)
Those who are at ease have contempt(F) for misfortune
    as the fate of those whose feet are slipping.(G)

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