Scales

Bildad the Shuhite answers.

A sinner cannot test his weight

By stepping on God’s awful scale.

However light, however frail,

His body can’t equilibrate

Against a void of empty air.

The pressure of his touch will yank,

The balance downward to condemn.

A clod of clay, he cannot clem

Himself to lesser than a blank.

But if you were that stealthy wraith,

Avenging angel of the Lord,

Armed even with your flaming sword,

You would be lighter than a breath.

A shadow is the dearth of light,

And light, in plenitude, can soar,

So shouldn’t absence even more?

In crackling and ecstatic flight

A flame ascends in swirling sparks

To the empyrean, its home,

While bodies made of heavy loam

Will never dance in gleeful arcs.

How can a mortal weigh his sins

Against a rival’s wickedness,

To sink the more, and lift the less

In games the higher platform wins?

Can human weakness ever force

Reluctant wretches to submit

To judgment over that dark pit,

The loser damned with no recourse.

A spider minces on its web,

And counts its weight in strands it spun.

It doesn’t need comparison

To tell the tautness from the ebb,

But builders leaning on a wall

They raised can never know its strength

By mortar slathered on its length.

It will hold up, or they will fall.

We know our balance from our fate.

God smites the wicked in their pride,

And for the good He will provide.

So take your worth from your dire state.