Job 8

CLV^{(i) 1} Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: ² How long shall you declare these things, And the sayings of your mouth be such abundant wind? ³ Does El distort judgment, And should He Who Suffices distort justice? ⁴ If your sons sin against Him, Then He shall cast them out into the grip of their transgression. ⁵ Yet if you yourself seek early for El, And to Him Who Suffices you supplicate, ⁶ If you are purged and upright, Even now He would rouse Himself over you, And He would bring peace to your righteous homestead. ⁷ So your beginning will seem inferior, Yet your latter state shall grow very great. ⁸ For ask, I pray, of the former generation, And establish yourself in the investigations of their fathers. ⁹ For we are of yesterday, and we know nothing, For our days on the earth are but a shadow. ¹⁰ Shall they not direct you, apprise you And bring forth declarations from their heart? ¹¹ Can papyrus grow without a marsh? Can marsh grass grow great having no water? ¹² Even while it is in its full pollination, though it be not plucked, Yet it would dry up before all other grass. ¹³ So are the paths laid for all those forgetting El, And so the expectation of the polluted shall perish, ¹⁴ He whose confidence is a web, And his trust is a spider's house. ¹⁵ He leans on his house, but it does not stand; He holds fast to it, but it does not stand firm. ¹⁶ He is moist in the presence of the sun, And his young shoots are sent forth throughout his garden. ¹⁷ His roots become tangled about a mound; He holds on a house of stones. ¹⁸ But if one swallows him up from his place, Then it disavows him:I have not seen you. ¹⁹ Behold, this is the elation of his brief way, And from the soil others shall sprout. ²⁰ Behold, El Himself does not reject the flawless man, And He does not hold fast on the hand o. ²¹ He shall yet fill your mouth with mirth, And your lips with shouting. ²² Those hating you shall be clothed with shame, And the tent of the wicked, it shall be no more.