Job 22  Common English Bible

² Can a human being be useful to God?
    Can an intelligent person bring profit?
³ Does the Almighty delight in your innocence?
    Does he gain when you perfect your ways?
⁴ Does he rebuke you for your piety,
    bring you in for judgment?
⁵ Isn’t your wickedness massive,
    your iniquity endless?
⁶ You have taken payments from your family for no reason;
    stripped the naked, leaving no clothes;
⁷     denied water to the thirsty,
    withheld bread from the starving.
(⁸ The powerful own land;
    the favored live in it.)
⁹ You have sent widows away empty;
    crushed orphans’ resources.
¹⁰ For this reason, snares surround you;
    sudden dread brings panic to you
¹¹     or a darkness that you can’t see;
    rushing water will cover you.

¹² Isn’t God in the heights of heaven;
    see how high the topmost stars are?
¹³ You say: “What does God know?
    Can he judge through thick clouds?
¹⁴     Clouds conceal him so he can’t see
        while he walks on heaven’s rim.”
¹⁵ Will you keep the ancient way
    traveled by sinful persons,
¹⁶     who were snatched prematurely
    when a river flooded their foundations,
¹⁷     who say to God, “Turn away from us;
            what can the Almighty do to us?”
¹⁸ Yet he filled their houses with good things;
    a sinner’s logic is beyond me.
¹⁹ The righteous see and rejoice;
    the innocent mock them:
²⁰     our enemies are certainly cut off;
    fire will devour what’s left of them.

²¹ Get along well with God and be at peace;
    from this something good will come to you.
²² Receive instruction from his mouth;
    put his words in your mind.
²³ If you return to the Almighty,^[a] you will be restored;
    if you keep wrongdoing out of your tent.
²⁴ Lay your prized possession in the dust,
    your gold from Ophir on a rock in a desert streambed.
²⁵ The Almighty will be your prized possession,
    silver piled up for you.
²⁶ Then you will take pleasure in the Almighty;
    lift up your face to God.
²⁷ You will pray to him, and he will hear you;
    you will fulfill your solemn promises.
²⁸ If you decree something, it will stand;
    light will shine on your ways.
²⁹ When they’re humbled, you will say: “Cheer up;
    God will rescue the lowly.
³⁰     He will deliver the guilty;
    they will be saved by your pure hands.”