- 1Then Job answered,
- 2“Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
- 3If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.
- 4God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?
- 5He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
- 6He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
- 7He commands the sun, and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.
- 8He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
- 9He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.
- 10He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
- 11Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
- 12Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
- 13“God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.
- 14How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him?
- 15Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.
- 16If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.
- 17For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
- 18He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
- 19If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’
- 20Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.
- 21I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.
- 22“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
- 23If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
- 24The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?
- 25“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
- 26They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
- 27If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;’
- 28I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.
- 29I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
- 30If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
- 31yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
- 32For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
- 33There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.
- 34Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;
- 35then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.