5:1
Make your appeal then. Will you find an answer? To which of the holy ones will you turn?
5:2
Resentment kills the senseless, and anger brings death to the fool.
5:3
I have seen the senseless taking root, when a curse fell suddenly on his house.
5:4
His children are deprived of prop and stay, ruined at the gate, and no one to defend them;
5:5
their harvest goes to feed the hungry, God snatches it from their mouths, and covetous people thirst for their possessions.
5:6
No, misery does not grow out of the soil, nor sorrow spring from the ground.
5:7
It is people who breed trouble for themselves as surely as eagles fly to the height.
5:8
If I were you, I should appeal to God and lay my case before him.
5:9
His works are great, past all reckoning, marvels beyond all counting.
5:10
He sends down rain to the earth, pours down water on the fields.
5:11
If his will is to raise up the downcast, or exalt the afflicted to the heights of prosperity,
5:12
he frustrates the plans of the artful so that they cannot succeed in their intrigues.
5:13
He traps the crafty in the snare of their own trickery, throws the plans of the cunning into disarray.
5:14
In daylight they come up against darkness, and grope their way as if noon were night.
5:15
He rescues the bankrupt from their jaws, and the needy from the grasp of the mighty.
5:16
Hope springs afresh for the weak, and wickedness must shut its mouth.
5:17
Blessed are those whom God corrects! Do not then scorn the lesson of Shaddai!
5:18
For he who wounds is he who soothes the sore, and the hand that hurts is the hand that heals.
5:19
Six times he will deliver you from sorrow, and the seventh time, evil will not touch you.
5:20
In time of famine, he will save you from death, and in wartime from the stroke of the sword.
5:21
You will be safe from the lash of the tongue, unafraid at the approach of the despoiler.
5:22
You will laugh at drought and frost, and have no fear of the beasts of the earth.
5:23
You will have a pact with the stones of the field, and live in amity with wild beasts.
5:24
You will know that your tent is secure, and your sheepfold unharmed when you inspect it.
5:25
You will see your descendants multiply, your offspring grow like the grass in the fields.
5:26
At a ripe age you will go to the grave, like a wheatsheaf stacked in due season.
5:27
All this we have observed and it is so! Heed it, you will be the wiser for it!
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