Job 8 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Then Bildad from Shuah answered:

How long will you go on saying these things? How long will the words out of your mouth blow like a hard wind?

Does God twist a verdict? Does the Almighty twist what is right?

If your children failed him, then he handed them over to their own rebellion.

But if you would go looking for God at first light, if you would beg the Almighty for mercy,

if you are clean and straight, then even now he would wake up for you and put your rightful home back where it belongs.

What you started with will look small next to how much your ending will grow.

So go ask the generation that came before you. Give your attention to what their fathers found out,

because we were born yesterday and we know nothing — our days on this earth are a shadow.

Won't they teach you? Won't they tell you? Won't they bring you words out of their own hearts?

Can papyrus shoot up where there is no marsh? Can reed grass grow tall without water?

While it is still green and nobody has cut it, it dries out ahead of every other plant.

That is where the roads run for everyone who forgets God, and that is how the hope of the false-hearted dies.

What he counts on gives way. What he trusts in is a spider's house.

He leans on his house and it does not hold. He takes hold of it and it does not stand.

He is green and full of sap in the sunlight, his shoots running out over the whole garden.

His roots braid themselves through a pile of stones. He looks out from a house of rock.

But tear him out of his place, and the place will disown him: I never saw you.

Look — this is all the joy his road comes to, and out of the dirt others push up where he stood.

Look — God does not throw away a man of integrity, and he does not take hold of the hand of people who do harm.

He will fill your mouth with laughter again, and your lips with shouting.

The people who hate you will be dressed in shame, and the tent of the corrupt will be gone.