Chapter 27

And thus Job continued to lay bare his thought:

As sure as he is a living God, he, the omnipotent, who so refuses me justice, who makes my lot in life so bitter;

while life is in me, while he still grants me breath,

never shall these lips justify the wrong, never this tongue utter the lie!

Gain your point with me you shall not; I will die sooner than abandon my plea of innocence.

That claim, once made, I will not forgo; not one act in all my life bids conscience reproach me.

Count him a knave that is my enemy, every detractor of mine a friend of wrong!

(What is the sinner’s hope worth after all his greedy getting, when God takes the life away from him?2 In that hour of need,

his cry for reprieve will go unheard;

he cannot go on for ever basking in the Almighty’s favour, calling God to his aid.

Now be God’s hand laid bare, now let me acknowledge openly the counsels of omnipotence!

Not one of you but knows the truth of it already; yet one and all you must be urging a false plea, without the need for it!

What spoil, after all, does God grant to the wicked? From his almighty hand, what abiding possession does the man of violence receive?

Sons beget he never so many, what avails it, when the sword overtakes them, and their children in turn must go wanting bread,

when the plague gives all the rest of his line their burial, and never a widow to bemoan them?

What avails it, to heap up silver like the sand, buy fine clothes, too, and think such treasures cheap as dirt,

if more upright men than he, more innocent than he, must have the wearing of those clothes, share out that silver at last?

Light as the moth he builds; not so frail a shelter the vineyard-watcher weaves about him.

Rich he is laid to rest, but nothing takes with him; rich he shall wake no more.

Helpless in the flood, driven in darkness by the storm,

carried off, as if sirocco or whirlwind had swept him away,

he is routed before the pitiless onslaught,

hands clapped in triumph, tongues hissing in derision as he goes.)