• 1 Then Elihu said:
  • 2 “Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am in the right, not God.’
  • 3 Yet you ask him, ‘What profit is it to me, and what do I gain by not sinning?’
  • 4 “I would like to reply to you and to your friends with you.
  • 5 Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds so high above you.
  • 6 If you sin, how does that affect him? If your sins are many, what does that do to him?
  • 7 If you are righteous, what do you give to him, or what does he receive from your hand?
  • 8 Your wickedness only affects humans like yourself, and your righteousness only other people.
  • 9 “People cry out under a load of oppression; they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful.
  • 10 But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,
  • 11 who teaches us more than he teaches the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds in the sky?’
  • 12 He does not answer when people cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked.
  • 13 Indeed, God does not listen to their empty plea; the Almighty pays no attention to it.
  • 14 How much less, then, will he listen when you say that you do not see him, that your case is before him and you must wait for him,
  • 15 and further, that his anger never punishes and he does not take the least notice of wickedness.
  • 16 So Job opens his mouth with empty talk; without knowledge he multiplies words.”