Job 22:5–16

⁵Is not your wickedness great?

Are not your iniquities endless?

⁶For you needlessly demanded security from your brothers

and deprived the naked of their clothing.

⁷You gave no water to the weary

and withheld food from the famished,

⁸while the land belonged to a mighty man,

and a man of honor lived on it.

⁹You sent widows away empty-handed,

and the strength of the fatherless was crushed.

¹⁰Therefore snares surround you,

and sudden peril terrifies you;

¹¹it is so dark you cannot see,

and a flood of water covers you.

¹²Is not God as high as the heavens?

Look at the highest stars, how lofty they are!

¹³Yet you say: ‘What does God know?

Does He judge through thick darkness?

¹⁴Thick clouds veil Him so He does not see us

as He traverses the vault of heaven.^a’

¹⁵Will you stay on the ancient path

that wicked men have trod?

¹⁶They were snatched away before their time,

and their foundations were swept away by a flood.