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35 Then Elihu answered, saying:

“Do you think this is just?
Do you say,
    ‘My righteousness is greater than God’s?’
For you ask, ‘What will it profit you?’
and ‘What do I gain by not sinning?’
I will answer you,
    and your friends with you.
Look up at the heavens and see;
    consider the clouds so high above you.
If you sin, how does it affect Him?
    If your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him?
If you are righteous, what do you give Him,
or what does He receive from your hand?[a]
Your wickedness is for a man like yourself,
    and your righteousness for a son of man.

“Because of a multitude of oppressions, they cry out;
they cry for help because of the power of the mighty.
10 But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker,
who gives songs in the night,
11 who teaches us more than the animals of the earth,
who makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’
12 There they cry out, but He does not answer,
    because of the pride of the wicked.
13 Indeed God does not hear an empty cry;
    Shaddai pays no attention to it.
14 How much less when you say that you do not perceive Him
    that the case is before Him and you must wait for Him.
15 And further, that His anger does not punish
    and that He does not know transgression?
16 So Job opens his mouth with nonsense,
    without knowledge he multiplies words.”

Footnotes

  1. Job 35:7 cf. Rom. 11:35.