3. Does it delight the Almighty if you are righteous?Does He profit if you perfect your behavior?
4. Does He correct you and take you to courtbecause of your piety?
5. Isn’t your wickedness abundantand aren’t your iniquities endless?
6. For you took collateral from your brothers without cause,stripping off their clothes and leaving them naked.
7. You gave no water to the thirstyand withheld food from the famished,
8. while the land belonged to a powerful manand an influential man lived on it.
9. You sent widows away empty-handed,and the strength of the fatherless was crushed.
10. Therefore snares surround you,and sudden dread terrifies you,
11. or darkness, so you cannot see,and a flood of water covers you.
12. Isn’t God as high as the heavens?And look at the highest stars — how lofty they are!
13. Yet you say: “What does God know?Can He judge through thick darkness?
14. Clouds veil Him so that He cannot see,as He walks on the circle of the sky.”
15. Will you continue on the ancient paththat wicked men have walked?
16. They were snatched away before their time,and their foundations were washed away by a river.
17. They were the ones who said to God, “Leave us alone! ”and “What can the Almighty do to us? ”