Chapter text
World English Bible
Verse-by-verse text with stable anchors, canonical chapter URLs, and copyable verse links.
- 1 “Call now; is there any who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?
- 2 For resentment kills the foolish man, and jealousy kills the simple.
- 3 I have seen the foolish taking root, but suddenly I cursed his habitation.
- 4 His children are far from safety. They are crushed in the gate. Neither is there any to deliver them,
- 5 whose harvest the hungry eat up, and take it even out of the thorns. The snare gapes for their substance.
- 6 For affliction doesn’t come out of the dust, neither does trouble spring out of the ground;
- 7 but man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.
- 8 “But as for me, I would seek God. I would commit my cause to God,
- 9 who does great things that can’t be fathomed, marvelous things without number;
- 10 who gives rain on the earth, and sends waters on the fields;
- 11 so that he sets up on high those who are low, those who mourn are exalted to safety.
- 12 He frustrates the plans of the crafty, so that their hands can’t perform their enterprise.
- 13 He takes the wise in their own craftiness; the counsel of the cunning is carried headlong.
- 14 They meet with darkness in the day time, and grope at noonday as in the night.
- 15 But he saves from the sword of their mouth, even the needy from the hand of the mighty.
- 16 So the poor has hope, and injustice shuts her mouth.
- 17 “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.
- 18 For he wounds and binds up. He injures and his hands make whole.
- 19 He will deliver you in six troubles; yes, in seven no evil will touch you.
- 20 In famine he will redeem you from death; in war, from the power of the sword.
- 21 You will be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, neither will you be afraid of destruction when it comes.
- 22 You will laugh at destruction and famine, neither will you be afraid of the animals of the earth.
- 23 For you will be allied with the stones of the field. The animals of the field will be at peace with you.
- 24 You will know that your tent is in peace. You will visit your fold, and will miss nothing.
- 25 You will know also that your offspring will be great, your offspring as the grass of the earth.
- 26 You will come to your grave in a full age, like a shock of grain comes in its season.
- 27 Behold, we have researched it. It is so. Hear it, and know it for your good.”