Chapter 18

Then answered Baldad the Suhite:

Ah, you word-mongers, you have never had enough! First grasp our meaning, and we might argue to some purpose;

but no, to men like thee we are worthless as dumb beasts.

See with what fury he rends his own bosom! Must earth be dispeopled, must the rocks be torn from their place, to gratify one man’s despairing mood?

Nay, the hopes of the wicked man are a light that shall be put out; a very will of the wisp;

darkness shall fall over his dwelling-place, and the lamp that shone there will shine no more.

The boldness of his own stride takes him prisoner; his own devices recoil against him;

into the trap he walks, struggles vainly with its meshes;

now he is laid by the heels! Mounts ever higher his burning thirst.

The ground sown with snares, pit-falls about his path,

fears attend him everywhere, catch everywhere at his feet.

His strength brought low by famine, hunger gnawing at his sides

and wasting all his beauty, death in its primal guise shall devour those limbs.

Gone the security of his home, now its master lies under the heels of tyrant death;

in his house strangers4 shall dwell, on his lands brimstone be scattered,

root never grow beneath nor harvest rise from it.

Gone the fame of him, gone the name of him, from street and country-side,

eclipsed in utter darkness, lost to the world.

Root nor branch of his posterity shall remain among his folk, vanished every trace of him from the lands he knew.

That doom with terror and amazement high and low shall witness.

Here (they will say) was a home of wrong-doing; he who lived here, lived a stranger to God.