Job 9

¹ Then Job answered,

² “Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?

³ If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.

⁴ God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?

⁵ He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.

⁶ He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.

⁷ He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.

⁸ He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.

⁹ He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.

¹⁰ He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.

¹¹ Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.

¹² Behold, 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.

¹⁴ How much less will I answer him, and choose my words to argue with him?

¹⁵ Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.

¹⁶ If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.

¹⁷ For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.

¹⁸ He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

¹⁹ If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’

²⁰ Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.

²¹ I 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.

²³ If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.

²⁴ The 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.

²⁶ They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.

²⁷ If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’

²⁸ I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that you will not hold me innocent.

²⁹ I will be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?

³⁰ If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,

³¹ yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me.

³² For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.

³³ There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.

³⁴ Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;

³⁵ then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.