Job 22 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:

Can a man be any use to God? Even the wise one is only useful to himself.

What does the Almighty get out of it if you are in the right? What does he gain if your road is blameless?

Is it because you fear him that he corrects you — that he takes you to court?

Isn't your evil enormous — your guilt past counting?

You took your brother's coat as security for nothing. You stripped the clothes off people who had almost nothing left.

You gave the exhausted man no water. You kept bread back from the hungry.

The land went to whoever had the strong arm. The man with the face everyone honors settled down on it.

You sent widows off with nothing in their hands, and the arms of orphans were crushed.

That is why there are traps all around you, why sudden terror knocks the strength out of you,

why the dark is too thick to see through, why a wall of water goes over your head.

Isn't God up there at the top of the sky? Look at the highest stars — see how far up they are.

And you say, "What does God know? Can he judge anything through cloud that black?"

"Thick cloud wraps him, so he sees nothing. He strolls along the rim of the sky."

Are you going to hold to the old road that violent men walked before you?

They were snatched away before their time. The river washed their foundation out from under them.

They were the ones who said to God, "Leave us alone," and, "What can the Almighty do to us?"

And it was he who filled their houses with good things. The advice of the guilty stays far away from me.

The just see it and celebrate. The innocent laugh at them:

"Look — the ones who rose against us are wiped out, and fire has eaten what was left of them."

Get on good terms with him and be at peace. That is how good comes back to you.

Take his instruction straight from his mouth. Lay his words down inside you.

If you come back to the Almighty you will be rebuilt — if you drive injustice far from your tent,

if you throw your gold down in the dust, your Ophir gold among the stones of the dry riverbed,

then the Almighty himself will be your gold, your silver stacked high.

Then you will take your delight in the Almighty, and you will lift your face to God again.

You will pray to him and he will listen, and you will make good on everything you promised.

You will decide on something and it will stand. Light will break open over your roads.

When men are brought down and you say, "Lift them up," he rescues the one whose eyes are on the ground.

He will pull free even the man who is not innocent — set free by the clean hands you hold up for him.