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 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 will 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 will condemn me.

Though I am blameless, it will 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 will 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 will 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.

1“My soul is weary of my life.

I will give free course to my complaint.

I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

2I will tell God, ‘Do not condemn me.

Show me why you contend with me.

3Is it good to you that you should oppress,

that you should despise the work of your hands,

and smile on the counsel of the wicked?

4Do you have eyes of flesh?

Or do you see as man sees?

5Are your days as the days of mortals,

or your years as man’s years,

6that you inquire after my iniquity,

and search after my sin?

7Although you know that I am not wicked,

there is no one who can deliver out of your hand.

8“‘Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether,

yet you destroy me.

9Remember, I beg you, that you have fashioned me as clay.

Will you bring me into dust again?

10Haven’t you poured me out like milk,

and curdled me like cheese?

11You have clothed me with skin and flesh,

and knit me together with bones and sinews.

12You have granted me life and loving kindness.

Your visitation has preserved my spirit.

13Yet you hid these things in your heart.

I know that this is with you:

14if I sin, then you mark me.

You will not acquit me from my iniquity.

15If I am wicked, woe to me.

If I am righteous, I still will not lift up my head,

being filled with disgrace,

and conscious of my affliction.

16If my head is held high, you hunt me like a lion.

Again you show yourself powerful to me.

17You renew your witnesses against me,

and increase your indignation on me.

Changes and warfare are with me.

18“‘Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb?

I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me.

19I should have been as though I had not been.

I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

20Aren’t my days few?

Stop!

Leave me alone, that I may find a little comfort,

21before I go where I will not return from,

to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death;

22the land dark as midnight,

of the shadow of death,

without any order,

where the light is as midnight.’”

1“But now those who are younger than I have me in derision,

whose fathers I considered unworthy to put with my sheep dogs.

2Of what use is the strength of their hands to me,

men in whom ripe age has perished?

3They are gaunt from lack and famine.

They gnaw the dry ground, in the gloom of waste and desolation.

4They pluck salt herbs by the bushes.

The roots of the broom tree are their food.

5They are driven out from among men.

They cry after them as after a thief,

6so that they live in frightful valleys,

and in holes of the earth and of the rocks.

7They bray among the bushes.

They are gathered together under the nettles.

8They are children of fools, yes, children of wicked men.

They were flogged out of the land.

9“Now I have become their song.

Yes, I am a byword to them.

10They abhor me, they stand aloof from me,

and don’t hesitate to spit in my face.

11For he has untied his cord, and afflicted me;

and they have thrown off restraint before me.

12On my right hand rise the rabble.

They thrust aside my feet.

They cast their ways of destruction up against me.

13They mar my path.

They promote my destruction

without anyone’s help.

14As through a wide breach they come.

They roll themselves in amid the ruin.

15Terrors have turned on me.

They chase my honor as the wind.

My welfare has passed away as a cloud.

16“Now my soul is poured out within me.

Days of affliction have taken hold of me.

17In the night season my bones are pierced in me,

and the pains that gnaw me take no rest.

18My garment is disfigured by great force.

It binds me about as the collar of my tunic.

19He has cast me into the mire.

I have become like dust and ashes.

20I cry to you, and you do not answer me.

I stand up, and you gaze at me.

21You have turned to be cruel to me.

With the might of your hand you persecute me.

22You lift me up to the wind, and drive me with it.

You dissolve me in the storm.

23For I know that you will bring me to death,

to the house appointed for all living.

24“However doesn’t one stretch out a hand in his fall?

Or in his calamity therefore cry for help?

25Didn’t I weep for him who was in trouble?

Wasn’t my soul grieved for the needy?

26When I looked for good, then evil came.

When I waited for light, darkness came.

27My heart is troubled, and doesn’t rest.

Days of affliction have come on me.

28I go mourning without the sun.

I stand up in the assembly, and cry for help.

29I am a brother to jackals,

and a companion to ostriches.

30My skin grows black and peels from me.

My bones are burned with heat.

31Therefore my harp has turned to mourning,

and my pipe into the voice of those who weep.