Dual Panel1Call if you will; is there any to answer you? To whom among the holy ones will you turn?
2Fools are destroyed by their own angry passion, and the end of childish resentment is death.
3I have seen it for myself: fools uprooted, their homes in sudden ruin,
4their children cut off from help, browbeaten in court with none to come to their defence.
5Their rich possessions are snatched from them; what they have harvested others hungrily devour; panting, thirsting for their wealth, stronger men seize it from the panniers.
6Mischief does not grow out of the ground, nor does trouble spring from the soil;
7yet man is born to trouble, as surely as birds fly upwards.
8For my part, I would make my appeal to God; I would lay my plea before him
9who does great and unsearchable things, marvels beyond all reckoning.
10He gives rain to the earth and sends water over the fields;
11he raises the lowly on high, and the mourners are lifted to safety;
12he frustrates the plots of the crafty, and they achieve no success;
13he traps the cunning in their own craftiness, and the schemers' plans are thrown into confusion.
14By day they encounter darkness, and grope their way at noon as in the night;
15he saves the destitute from their greed, and the needy from the clutches of the strong.
16So the poor have hope again, to the outrage of the unjust.
17Happy indeed are they whom God rebukes! Therefore do not reject the Almighty's discipline.
18For, though he wounds, he will bind up; the hands that harm will heal.
19You may meet disaster six times, and he will rescue you; seven times, and no harm will touch you.
20In famine he will deliver you from death, in battle from the menace of the sword.
21You will be shielded from the scourge of slander, unafraid when violence comes.
22You will laugh at violence and famine and need not fear any beast on earth;
23for you will be in league with the stones of the fields, and the wild animals have been constrained to leave you at peace.
24You will know that all is well with your household, you will look round your home and find nothing amiss;
25you will know that your descendants will be many and your offspring like grass, thick on the earth.
26You will come to the grave in sturdy old age as sheaves come in due season to the threshing-floor.
27We have enquired into all this, and so it is; this we have heard, and know it to be true for you.