English / ERV
Job 22
Easy-to-Read Version, 2006
- 1Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:
- 2“Does God need our help? Even the wisest of us is not really useful to him.
- 3Does your living right benefit him? Does God All-Powerful gain anything if you follow him?
- 4Why does God blame and punish you? Is it because you worship him?
- 5No, it is because you sin so much. You never stop sinning.
- 6Maybe to guarantee loans you took things from people for no reason. Maybe you took a poor man’s clothes to make sure he paid you back.[1]
- 7Maybe you failed to give water or food to people who were tired or hungry.
- 8You have a lot of farmland, and people respect you.
- 9But maybe you sent widows away without giving them anything. And maybe you took advantage of orphans.
- 10That is why traps are all around you, and sudden trouble makes you afraid.
- 11That is why it is so dark you cannot see, and why a flood of water covers you.
- 12“God lives in the highest part of heaven and looks down on the highest stars.
- 13But you might say, ‘What does God know? Can he see through the dark clouds to judge us?
- 14Thick clouds hide us from his eyes, so he cannot see us as he walks around the edge of the sky.’
- 15“Job, you are walking on the old path that evil people walked on long ago.
- They were destroyed before it was their time to die. They were washed away by the flood.