Job 20
Zophar asserts that the wicked will ultimately face destruction and suffering, despite their temporary prosperity and joy. Their pride and evil deeds will lead to their downfall, and they will be repaid for their wrongdoings. The wicked will be consumed by their own vices and will suffer anguish and wrath from God. In the end, they will be forsaken and their sinfulness will be revealed to all.
1Then Zophar the Naamathite answered by saying2In response, various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind moves quickly through different ideas3The teaching you use to admonish me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding will respond for me4This, I know, is from the beginning, from the time that man was set over the earth5that the praise of the impious shall be short, and the joy of the hypocrite lasts only a moment6If his pride ascends even towards the heavens, and his head touches the clouds7in the end, he will be destroyed like a trash heap, and those who had seen him will say: "Where is he?8Like a dream that flies away, he will not be found; he will pass away like a nightmare9The eyes that had seen him, will not see him; no longer will his own place admire him10His sons will be worn away by poverty, and his own hands will deliver his grief to him11His bones will be filled with the vices of his youth, and they will sleep with him in the dust12For, when evil will be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue13He will permit it, and not abandon it, and he will conceal it in his throat14His bread in his belly will be turned into the venom of snakes within him15The riches that he devours, he will vomit up, and from his stomach God will draw them out16He will suck the head of snakes, and the tongue of the viper will kill him17(May he never see the streams of the river, the torrents of honey and butter.18He will be repaid for all he has done, yet he will not be consumed; according to the multitude of his schemes, so also will he suffer19For, having broken in, he stripped the poor. He has quickly stolen away a house he did not build20And yet his stomach will not be satisfied, and when he has the things he desires, he will not be able to possess them21Nothing remained of his portion, and, because of this, nothing will continue of his kind22When he will be satisfied, he will be constrained; he will seethe, and all anguish will fall upon him23May his stomach be filled, so that God may send forth the fury of his wrath to him and may rain down his battle upon him24He will flee from weapons of iron, and he will fall in an arc of brass25which had been drawn and had issued forth from its sheath, glittering in its bitterness: the horrible ones will go forth and approach over him26All darkness has been hidden in his secrecy. A fire that has not been set will devour him; he will be thrown down and forsaken in his tabernacle27The heavens will reveal his sinfulness, and the earth will rise up against him28The offspring of his house will be exposed; he will be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath29This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his words from the Lord
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