Chapter 20

  Then Sophar the Naamathite answered, and said:  

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  Therefore various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind is hurried away to different things.  

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  The doctrine with which thou reprovest me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding shall answer for me.  

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  This I know from the beginning, since man was placed upon the earth,  

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  that the praise of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.  

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  If his pride mount up even to heaven, and his head touch the clouds:  

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  In the end he shall be destroyed like a dunghill, and they that has seen him shall say: Where is he?  

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  As a dream that fleeth away he shall not be found, he shall pass as a vision of the night:  

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  The eyes that had seen him, shall see him no more, neither shall his place any more behold him.  

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  His children shall be oppressed with want, and his hands shall render him his sorrow.  

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  His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth, and they shall sleep with him in the dust.  

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  For when evil shall be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.  

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  He will spare it, and not leave it, and will hide it in his throat.  

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  His bread in his belly shall be turned into the gall of asps within him.  

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  The riches which he hath swallowed; he shall vomit up, and God shall draw them out of his belly.  

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  He shall suck the head of asps, and the viper's tongue shall kill him.  

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  (Let him not see the streams of the river, the brooks of honey and of butter.)  

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  He shall be punished for all that he did, and yet shall not be consumed: according to the multitude of his devices so also shall he suffer.  

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  Because he broke in and stripped the poor: he hath violently taken away a house which he did not build.  

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  And yet his belly was not filled: and when he hath the things he coveted, he shall not be able to possess them.  

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  There was nothing left of his meat, and therefore nothing shall continue of his goods:  

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  When he shall be filled, he shall be straitened, he shall burn, and every sorrow shall fall upon him.  

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  May his belly be filled, that God may send forth the wrath of his indignation upon him, and rain down his war upon him.  

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  He shall flee from weapons of iron, and shall fall upon a bow of brass.  

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  The sword is drawn out, and cometh forth from its scabbard, and glittereth in his bitterness: the terrible ones shall go and come upon him.  

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  All darkness is hid in his secret places: a fire that is not kindled shall devour him, he shall be afflicted when left in his tabernacle.  

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  The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him.  

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  The offspring of his house shall be exposed, he shall be pulled down in the day of God's wrath.  

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  This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his doings from the Lord.  

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