Job 35

Tree of Life Version

² “Do you think this is just?
Do you say,
    ‘My righteousness is greater than God’s?’
³ For you ask, ‘What will it profit you?’
and ‘What do I gain by not sinning?’
⁴ I will answer you,
    and your friends with you.
⁵ Look up at the heavens and see;
    consider the clouds so high above you.
⁶ If you sin, how does it affect Him?
    If your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him?
⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give Him,
or what does He receive from your hand?^[a]
8 Your wickedness is for a man like yourself,
    and your righteousness for a son of man.

⁹ “Because of a multitude of oppressions, they cry out;
they cry for help because of the power of the mighty.
¹⁰ But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker,
who gives songs in the night,
¹¹ who teaches us more than the animals of the earth,
who makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’
¹² There they cry out, but He does not answer,
    because of the pride of the wicked.
¹³ Indeed God does not hear an empty cry;
    Shaddai pays no attention to it.
¹⁴ How much less when you say that you do not perceive Him
    that the case is before Him and you must wait for Him.
¹⁵ And further, that His anger does not punish
    and that He does not know transgression?
¹⁶ So Job opens his mouth with nonsense,
    without knowledge he multiplies words.”