Job 35  Easy-to-Read Version

² “Job, it is not fair for you to say,
    ‘I am more right than God,’
³ because you also ask him,
    ‘What’s the use of trying to please you?
    What good will it do me if I don’t sin?’

⁴ “Job, I want to answer you and your friends here with you.
⁵ Look up at the sky.
    Look at the clouds, which are so much higher than you.
⁶ If you sin, it does not hurt God.
    Even if your sins are too many to count, that does nothing to God.
⁷ And if you are good, that does not help God.
    He gets nothing from you.
⁸ Job, the good and bad things you do
    affect only other people like yourself.

⁹ “If people are being hurt, they cry out
    and beg for protection from those who hurt them.
¹⁰ But they forget to say, ‘Where is God, the one who made me?
    He is the one who gives us songs to sing in the night.
¹¹ He is the one who makes us smarter than any animal on earth
    and wiser than any bird.’

¹² “Or if evil people ask God for help, he will not answer them,
    because they are too proud.
¹³ God will not listen to their worthless begging.
    God All-Powerful will not pay attention to them.
¹⁴ So, Job, God will not listen to you
    when you say that you don’t see him.
You say you are waiting for your chance to meet with him
    and prove that you are innocent.

¹⁵ “Job thinks that God does not punish evil
    and that he pays no attention to sin.
¹⁶ So he continues his worthless talking.
    Everything he has said shows he does not know what he is talking about.”