2 

“Now this does rouse my soul,

my heart is stirred,

3 

to listen to your insults and excuses--

an empty answer to my arguments!

4 

Know you not that from of old,

ever since man was in the world,

5 

the sinner never sings for long,

and godless men have shortlived joy?

6 

Though he may tower in triumph to the skies,

although his head may touch the very clouds,

7 

he shall be swept away like his own dung,

till those who knew him ask, ‘Where is he?’

8 

He disappears like a dream--no trace of him--

he vanishes like a vision of the night;

11 

when manly vigour fills his frame,

he and his manly vigour go to dust;

10 

he leaves his children poor,

his sons have to disgorge his plunder.

12 

Though sin is a sweet morsel in his mouth,

though he rolls it under his tongue,

13 

loth to let it go,

keeping it still on his palate,

14 

yet the food turns to venom in his stomach,

to the poison of asps;

16 

asps shall sting him with their tongues,

and he sucks in poison.

15 

He has to vomit the wealth he has swallowed;

God makes him eject it.

17 

He shall not feed on milk from the meadows,

on honey or on butter from the pastures;

18 

his swelling hoards bring him no happiness,

he has no joy, for all his trafficking.

19 

As he was hard upon the poor,

and seized on houses that he never built,

20 

as his greed knew no pause,

he shall not save one thing that he desired;

21 

as nothing ever escaped his grasp,

his own. prosperity shall not last;

22 

for all his wealth, he finds himself in straits,

exposed to the full force of misery.

23 

God lets his anger loose at him,

and rains on him his wrath!

24 

He flies from men in iron mail,

and is shot down by a bow of bronze;

25 

the arrow comes out at his back,

the point driven through his entrails;

death’s terrors close on him,

26 

deep darkness is his doom.

A fire that no man lit consumes him,

burning up all he leaves at home;

28 

his well-stored house is swept to ruin,

accursed in the day of wrath divine.

27 

Heaven lays bare his guilt,

earth rises to denounce him.

29 

This is what God bestows upon a sinner,

this is what God awards a godless man.”