Bringing the drama of the first section to its close, the fifth chapter sets the vindicated righteous man before those who once oppressed him, and shows the ungodly seized with fear and remorse. They confess their folly, admitting 'we fools accounted his life madness,' and watch their own hope scatter like chaff before the wind, like smoke, like a passing shadow. The righteous, by contrast, live forever, their reward with the Lord; and God takes His zeal as armor and turns the whole creation into a weapon against the mad. Closing the meditation on immortality, the chapter declares that the final judgment reverses every earthly verdict on the righteous and the wicked.