² ‘If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?
    But who can keep from speaking?
³ Think how you have instructed many,
    how you have strengthened feeble hands.
⁴ Your words have supported those who stumbled;
    you have strengthened faltering knees.
⁵ But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged;
    it strikes you, and you are dismayed.
⁶ Should not your piety be your confidence
    and your blameless ways your hope?

⁷ ‘Consider now: who, being innocent, has ever perished?
    Where were the upright ever destroyed?
⁸ As I have observed, those who plough evil
    and those who sow trouble reap it.
⁹ At the breath of God they perish;
    at the blast of his anger they are no more.
¹⁰ The lions may roar and growl,
    yet the teeth of the great lions are broken.
¹¹ The lion perishes for lack of prey,
    and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.

² ‘How long will you say such things?
    Your words are a blustering wind.
³ Does God pervert justice?
    Does the Almighty pervert what is right?
⁴ When your children sinned against him,
    he gave them over to the penalty of their sin.
⁵ But if you will seek God earnestly
    and plead with the Almighty,
⁶ if you are pure and upright,
    even now he will rouse himself on your behalf
    and restore you to your prosperous state.
⁷ Your beginnings will seem humble,
    so prosperous will your future be.