The Book of Job
Chapter 20
1 – Then Sophar the Naamathite answered, and said:
2 – Therefore various thoughts succeed one another in me, and my mind is hurried away to different things.
3 – The doctrine with which thou reprovest me, I will hear, and the spirit of my understanding shall answer for me.
4 – This I know from the beginning, since man was placed upon the earth,
5 – that the praise of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.
6 – If his pride mount up even to heaven, and his head touch the clouds:
7 – In the end he shall be destroyed like a dunghill, and they that has seen him shall say: Where is he?
8 – As a dream that fleeth away he shall not be found, he shall pass as a vision of the night:
9 – The eyes that had seen him, shall see him no more, neither shall his place any more behold him.
10 – His children shall be oppressed with want, and his hands shall render him his sorrow.
11 – His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth, and they shall sleep with him in the dust.
12 – For when evil shall be sweet in his mouth, he will hide it under his tongue.
13 – He will spare it, and not leave it, and will hide it in his throat.
14 – His bread in his belly shall be turned into the gall of asps within him.
15 – The riches which he hath swallowed; he shall vomit up, and God shall draw them out of his belly.
16 – He shall suck the head of asps, and the viper’s tongue shall kill him.
17 – (Let him not see the streams of the river, the brooks of honey and of butter.)
18 – 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.
19 – Because he broke in and stripped the poor: he hath violently taken away a house which he did not build.
20 – And yet his belly was not filled: and when he hath the things he coveted, he shall not be able to possess them.
21 – There was nothing left of his meat, and therefore nothing shall continue of his goods:
22 – When he shall be filled, he shall be straitened, he shall burn, and every sorrow shall fall upon him.
23 – May his belly be filled, that God may send forth the wrath of his indignation upon him, and rain down his war upon him.
24 – He shall flee from weapons of iron, and shall fall upon a bow of brass.
25 – 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.
26 – 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.
27 – The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him.
28 – The offspring of his house shall be exposed, he shall be pulled down in the day of God’s wrath.
29 – This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the inheritance of his doings from the Lord.
The Catholic Bible Online. Scriptures are from The Douay Rheims Catholic Bible 1582-1610 a.d. Version In the Public Domain. The Douay Rheims Bible is a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English undertaken by members of the English College, Douai in the service of the Catholic Church.