Job 26-27

EasyEnglish Bible

² ‘Do not think that you have helped me,
    a weak and helpless man.
Nothing that you have said makes me feel stronger.
³ What good advice have you given me
    to make me wise?
You have not really shown me how clever you are!
⁴ Someone must have helped you to say these wise words.
    Who has put all these thoughts in your minds?

⁵ Dead people shake with fear.
    They are under the deep waters.
⁶ God sees everything that happens
    in the place of dead people.
Nothing can hide that terrible place from him.
⁷ He puts the skies in their place in the north,
    so that they cover empty space.
He hangs the earth in the skies
    and it stays there.
⁸ He fills the clouds with water.
    They become heavy but they do not break.
⁹ When the moon is big and round, he hides it.
    He causes clouds to cover it.
¹⁰ He marks the border between the sea and the sky.
    It is the place where the night finishes and the day begins.
¹¹ When God is angry,
    he shouts at the pillars under the sky.
When they hear his command,
    they shake with fear.
¹² He used his power to control the sea.
He used his wisdom to destroy Rahab,
    the great sea monster.
¹³ He used his breath to make the sky become bright.
With his hand he cut the great sea snake
    as it ran away.
¹⁴ These are only a few of the things that God does.
    We only know about a few small things.
If he used all of his power,
    we could never understand.’

² ‘Almighty God has not been fair to me.
    He has caused my life to be very sad.
As surely as he lives, I promise this:
³ As long as God's Spirit gives me life,
⁴     I will never speak any lies.
    I will always be honest.
⁵ I will never agree that you, my three friends, are right.
Until the day of my death,
    I will continue to say what I know is right.
⁶ I will never agree that I am guilty.
During all of my life,
    my thoughts do not say that I am doing anything wrong.

⁷ I pray that God will punish my enemies
    as he punishes all wicked people.
They do bad things to me,
    so they deserve punishment.
⁸ When God chooses to remove wicked people,
    they cannot hope for any good thing.
God will cause them to die.
⁹ When they are in trouble and they pray for help,
    God will not listen to them.
¹⁰ People like that are not happy that Almighty God is their friend.
    They do not like to pray to him all the time.
¹¹ I will teach you about the power of Almighty God.
    I will explain to you what he is thinking.
¹² You yourselves have all seen what God has done.
    So you should stop saying all these useless things!
¹³ I will tell you what Almighty God does to wicked people.
    He punishes cruel people as they deserve.
¹⁴ Wicked people may have many children,
    but they will die in war.
Their children will never have enough food to eat.
¹⁵ Illness will kill any children who continue to live.
    Their widows will not weep when they are dead.
¹⁶ Wicked people may have lots of money.
    They may have silver like heaps of sand.
    They may have more clothes than they could ever wear.
¹⁷ But one day righteous people will wear those clothes.
    Honest people will share the silver among themselves.
¹⁸ The houses that wicked people build are not strong.
    They are as weak as a spider's web,^[b]
    or a shepherd's hut,
¹⁹ Their riches quickly disappear.
    They are rich when they go to sleep,
    but poor when they wake up.
²⁰ Troubles come to them like a flood of water,
    and they are very afraid.
A storm comes in the night to carry them away.
²¹ The east wind picks them up and takes then far away.^[c]
    It removes them from their homes.
²² It is a strong wind that hits wicked people
    and it never stops.
It continues to beat them as they try to escape.
²³ The cruel wind laughs at them
    as they run away in fear.’