12 | Job | Passage |
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1 |
Job spoke next. He said: |
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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