Small and great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

For he wounds, but he also bandages; he strikes, but his hands also heal.

He is a well-watered plant in the sun, its shoots spread over its garden.

Indeed, this is the joy of his way, and out of the earth others spring up.

Who will contend with me? If anyone can, I will be silent and die.

What do you know that we don’t know? What do you understand that we don’t understand?

Make then my pledge with you. Who else will put up security for me?

Does he not see my ways and count all my steps?

For I would have committed a shameful act, an iniquity to be judged.

then this also would be iniquity to be judged, for I would have been false to God above.

And its young ones devour the blood, and where the dead carcasses are, there it is.”

It ranks first among the works of God, the One who made it has furnished it with a sword.

Call to mind now: Who, being innocent, ever perished? And where were upright people ever destroyed?

“It is all one! That is why I say, ‘He destroys the blameless and the guilty.’

If a land has been given into the hand of a wicked man, he covers the faces of its judges; if it is not he, then who is it?

For he knows deceitful men; when he sees evil, will he not consider it?

Moreover, this will become my deliverance, for no godless person would come before him.

All his days the wicked man suffers torment, throughout the number of the years that are stored up for the tyrant.

He does not expect to escape from darkness; he is marked for the sword;

he wanders about – food for vultures; he knows that the day of darkness is at hand.