Job 35

1Then Elihu answered:

2“Do you think this is just, when you say, ‘I am more righteous than God’?

3For you ask, ‘What advantage is it to you? What do I gain, more than if I had sinned?’

4I will answer you, and your friends with you.

5Look up at the heavens and see; gaze at the clouds high above you.

6If you sin, what do you accomplish against him? If your transgressions are many, what do you do to him?

7If you are righteous, what do you give him? Or what does he receive from your hand?

8Your wickedness affects a person like yourself, and your righteousness a fellow human being.

9Because of great oppression people cry out; they call for help against the arm of the mighty.

10But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,

11who teaches us more than the animals of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?’

12There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil people.

13Surely God does not listen to an empty cry; the Almighty pays no attention to it.

14How much less when you say that you do not see him, that your case is before him and you are waiting for him!

15And now, because his anger does not punish and he takes little notice of arrogance,

16Job opens his mouth with empty talk; he piles up words without knowledge.”