Job 20
Zophar speaks to Job again ▼▼20:0 Sadly, Zophar now says things that do not help Job. He tells him, again, that God will punish bad people. He does not understand how Job feels. He does not know how to help Job.
1Then Zophar replied. And this is what he said. 2‘The things that you said have caused me to be very confused. I have troubles in my mind but I must answer you.3You have said bad things about me. But now I know how to reply to you.
4I am sure that you know this fact. It has been true ever since men lived on the earth.
5A bad man will only be happy for a short time. He will only enjoy his life for a few moments.
6He may think that he is very important. He may be very powerful and his head may seem to touch the sky. ▼
▼20:6 ‘His head may seem to touch the sky.’ This means that important people seem to be taller than other people.
7But he will die and he will never return. His friends will ask where he is.
He will be like things that you put into the toilet. They, too, go away and never come back.
8You will not find him again. He will be like a dream that you do not see in the morning. He will have gone, like something that you saw in your dream.
9People who knew him will not see him again. No one will see him in the house where he lived before.
10He was not a fair man and he took money from poor people. So his children must pay that money back to them.
11When he was a young man, he was very strong. But he will die and his bones will lie in the ground.
12He enjoys the wrong things that he does. They are like something sweet in his mouth.
13He continues to do wrong things. That is like a man who keeps something in his mouth to taste it again and again.
14But this will be like food that has become bad in his stomach. It will be like the poison of a snake inside him.
15He cannot keep all the money that he has taken from other people. God will say that he should give it all back to them.
16He will drink the poison of snakes. An adder will bite him and it will kill him.
17He might get as much oil from olives as there is water in the stream. But he will not enjoy that oil.
He may have as much cream as there is water in the river. But he will not enjoy that cream either.
Nor will he enjoy rivers of cream and other sweet things. 18He will have to give back everything that he owned. He will not enjoy the things that he has worked for.
19This will happen because he took money from poor people. And he took houses that someone else had built.
20He will always want to have more money. But his riches will not save him.
21Now there is nothing that he can eat. So his good health will not continue.
22He may be very rich, but he will soon have many troubles.
23When he has filled his stomach with food, God will be very angry with him. God will show him how angry he is. And God will punish him.
24He may run from a soldier who has a sword. But another soldier, with a bow, will catch him and he will shoot an arrow at him.
25He pulls the arrow out of his back. Its point hurts him and he is very afraid.
26He will not be able to save the things that he had. God will send a fire to kill him and to destroy everything that he had.
27God in heaven knows about all the wrong things that a bad man does. People on earth have also seen him do those wrong things.
28God will very angry. And he will destroy the bad man’s home and all his things. It will be like a flood that destroys a house.
29This is what will happen to bad people. God has decided that this will happen to them.’
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