| 12 | Job | Passage |
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| 1 |
Job spoke next. He said:
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Job. Jb.12.1-14.22
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| 2 |
Doubtless, you are the voice of the people, and when you die, wisdom will die with you!
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| 3 |
But I have a brain, as well as you, I am in no way inferior to you, and who, in any case, does not know all that?
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| 4 |
Anyone becomes a laughing-stock to his friends if he cries to God and expects an answer. People laugh at anyone who has integrity and is upright.
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| 5 |
'Add insult to injury,' think the prosperous, 'strike the fellow now that he is staggering!'
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| 6 |
And yet the tents of brigands are left in peace: those who provoke God dwell secure and so does anyone who makes a god of his fist!
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| 7 |
You have only to ask the cattle, for them to instruct you, and the birds of the sky, for them to inform you.
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| 8 |
The creeping things of earth will give you lessons, and the fish of the sea provide you an explanation:
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| 9 |
there is not one such creature but will know that the hand of God has arranged things like this!
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| 10 |
In his hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of every human being!
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| 11 |
Can the ear not distinguish the value of what is said, just as the palate can tell one food from another?
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| 12 |
Wisdom is found in the old, and discretion comes with great age.
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| 13 |
But in him there is wisdom, and power too, and good counsel no less than discretion.
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| 14 |
What he destroys, no one can rebuild; whom he imprisons, no one can release.
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| 15 |
Is there a drought? He has withheld the waters. Do they play havoc on earth? He has let them loose.
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| 16 |
In him is strength, in him resourcefulness, beguiler and beguiled alike are his.
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| 17 |
He robs a country's counsellors of their wits, turns judges into fools.
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| 18 |
He undoes the belts of kings and knots a rope round their waists.
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| 19 |
He makes priests walk barefoot, and overthrows the powers that are established.
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| 20 |
He strikes the most assured of speakers dumb and robs old people of their discretion.
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| 21 |
He pours contempt on the nobly born, and unbuckles the belt of the strong.
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| 22 |
He unveils the depths of darkness, brings shadow dark as death to the light.
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| 23 |
He builds nations up, then ruins them, he makes peoples expand, then suppresses them.
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| 24 |
He strips a country's leaders of their judgement, and leaves them to wander in a trackless waste,
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| 25 |
to grope about in unlit darkness, lurching to and fro as though drunk.
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