Job 15:1  Eliphaz of Teman spoke a second time:

Job 15:2  "If you were truly wise, would you sound so much like a windbag, belching hot air?

Job 15:3  Would you talk nonsense in the middle of a serious argument, babbling baloney?

Job 15:4  Look at you! You trivialize religion, turn spiritual conversation into empty gossip.

Job 15:5  It's your sin that taught you to talk this way. You chose an education in fraud.

Job 15:6  Your own words have exposed your guilt. It's nothing I've said--you've incriminated yourself!

Job 15:7  Do you think you're the first person to have to deal with these things? Have you been around as long as the hills?

Job 15:8  Were you listening in when God planned all this? Do you think you're the only one who knows anything?

Job 15:9  What do you know that we don't know? What insights do you have that we've missed?

Job 15:10  Gray beards and white hair back us up-- old folks who've been around a lot longer than you.

Job 15:11  Are God's promises not enough for you, spoken so gently and tenderly?

Job 15:12  Why do you let your emotions take over, lashing out and spitting fire,

Job 15:13  Pitting your whole being against God by letting words like this come out of your mouth?

Job 15:14  Do you think it's possible for any mere mortal to be sinless in God's sight, for anyone born of a human mother to get it all together?

Job 15:15  Why, God can't even trust his holy angels. He sees the flaws in the very heavens themselves,

Job 15:16  So how much less we humans, smelly and foul, who lap up evil like water?

Job 15:17  "I've a thing or two to tell you, so listen up! I'm letting you in on my views;

Job 15:18  It's what wise men and women have always taught, holding nothing back from what they were taught

Job 15:19  By their parents, back in the days when they had this land all to themselves:

Job 15:20  Those who live by their own rules, not God's, can expect nothing but trouble, and the longer they live, the worse it gets.

Job 15:21  Every little sound terrifies them. Just when they think they have it made, disaster strikes.

Job 15:22  They despair of things ever getting better-- they're on the list of people for whom things always turn out for the worst.

Job 15:23  They wander here and there, never knowing where the next meal is coming from-- every day is doomsday!

Job 15:24  They live in constant terror, always with their backs up against the wall

Job 15:25  Because they insist on shaking their fists at God, defying God Almighty to his face,

Job 15:26  Always and ever at odds with God, always on the defensive.

Job 15:27  "Even if they're the picture of health, trim and fit and youthful,

Job 15:28  They'll end up living in a ghost town sleeping in a hovel not fit for a dog, a ramshackle shack.

Job 15:29  They'll never get ahead, never amount to a hill of beans.

Job 15:30  And then death--don't think they'll escape that! They'll end up shriveled weeds, brought down by a puff of God's breath.

Job 15:31  There's a lesson here: Whoever invests in lies, gets lies for interest,

Job 15:32  Paid in full before the due date. Some investment!

Job 15:33  They'll be like fruit frost-killed before it ripens, like buds sheared off before they bloom.

Job 15:34  The godless are fruitless--a barren crew; a life built on bribes goes up in smoke.

Job 15:35  They have sex with sin and give birth to evil. Their lives are wombs for breeding deceit."