Job 22

1Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 2Can a person be of any use to God? Even the wise benefit only themselves. 3Is the Almighty pleased if you are righteous? Is it any gain to him that you keep your ways blameless? 4Is it because you revere him that he rebukes you and enters into judgment with you? 5Is your evil not great? Is there no end to your iniquities? 6You took pledges from your relatives for no reason and stripped the poor of their clothing. 7You did not give the weary water to drink, and you kept back bread from the hungry. 8The land belonged to the man with power, and the favored man lived on it. 9Widows you sent away with empty hands, and the strength of the fatherless was crushed. 10So now traps surround you on every side, and sudden terror shakes you, 11or darkness, where you cannot see, and a flood of waters covers you. 12Is not God up in the height of heaven? See the topmost stars, how high they are! 13And you ask, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the thick cloud? 14Clouds are a screen around him, and he does not see; he walks about on the dome of the sky.’ 15Will you hold to the ancient path that wicked people have walked, 16who were seized before their time, whose foundations a river swept away? 17They told God, ‘Keep away from us! What can the Almighty do to us?’ 18And yet he had filled their houses with good things! But the counsel of the wicked is far from me. 19The righteous see it and are glad; the innocent laugh at them: 20Surely our enemies are destroyed, and fire has eaten up what they left! 21Come to terms with God and be at peace; through this, good will come to you. 22Take the teaching that comes from his mouth, and set his words in your heart. 23If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up again; if you put wrongdoing far from your tent, 24if you lay your gold in the dust, your gold of Ophir among the stones of the streambeds, 25then the Almighty will be your gold and your silver piled high. 26For then the Almighty will be your delight, and you will raise your face to God. 27You will pray to him, and he will listen to you, and you will pay what you vowed. 28Whatever you resolve will stand firm for you, and light will shine along your paths. 29When others are laid low, you will say, ‘Up!’ and he will save the humble. 30He will set free even someone who is not innocent; that one will go free because your hands are clean.