¹ Make your appeal then. Will you find an answer? To which of the holy ones will you turn?

² Resentment kills the senseless, and anger brings death to the fool.

³ I have seen the senseless taking root, when a curse fell suddenly on his house.

⁴ His children are deprived of prop and stay, ruined at the gate, and no one to defend them;

⁵ their harvest goes to feed the hungry, God snatches it from their mouths, and covetous people thirst for their possessions.

⁶ No, misery does not grow out of the soil, nor sorrow spring from the ground.

⁷ It is people who breed trouble for themselves as surely as eagles fly to the height.

⁸ If I were you, I should appeal to God and lay my case before him.

⁹ His works are great, past all reckoning, marvels beyond all counting.

¹⁰ He sends down rain to the earth, pours down water on the fields.

¹¹ If his will is to raise up the downcast, or exalt the afflicted to the heights of prosperity,

¹² he frustrates the plans of the artful so that they cannot succeed in their intrigues.

¹³ He traps the crafty in the snare of their own trickery, throws the plans of the cunning into disarray.

¹⁴ In daylight they come up against darkness, and grope their way as if noon were night.

¹⁵ He rescues the bankrupt from their jaws, and the needy from the grasp of the mighty.

¹⁶ Hope springs afresh for the weak, and wickedness must shut its mouth.

¹⁷ Blessed are those whom God corrects! Do not then scorn the lesson of Shaddai!

¹⁸ For he who wounds is he who soothes the sore, and the hand that hurts is the hand that heals.

¹⁹ Six times he will deliver you from sorrow, and the seventh time, evil will not touch you.

²⁰ In time of famine, he will save you from death, and in wartime from the stroke of the sword.

²¹ You will be safe from the lash of the tongue, unafraid at the approach of the despoiler.

²² You will laugh at drought and frost, and have no fear of the beasts of the earth.

²³ You will have a pact with the stones of the field, and live in amity with wild beasts.

²⁴ You will know that your tent is secure, and your sheepfold unharmed when you inspect it.

²⁵ You will see your descendants multiply, your offspring grow like the grass in the fields.

²⁶ At a ripe age you will go to the grave, like a wheatsheaf stacked in due season.

²⁷ All this we have observed and it is so! Heed it, you will be the wiser for it!