Job 29 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Job picked up his argument again and said:

If I could only have back the months that are gone, the days when God kept watch over me —

when his lamp burned above my head and I walked through the dark by his light;

back when I was in my prime, when God's private counsel sat over my tent,

while the Almighty was still with me and my children were all around me;

when my steps were washed in cream and the rock poured out rivers of oil for me;

When I walked out to the city gate and took my seat in the open square,

the young men saw me and stepped back, and the old men got to their feet and stood.

The officials stopped in the middle of a sentence and put a hand over their mouths.

The voices of the leading men dropped away, and their tongues stuck to the roofs of their mouths.

Any ear that heard me called me a good man. Any eye that saw me spoke up on my side.

Because I got the poor man out when he screamed for help, and the orphan, who had no one at all.

The dying man's thanks came down on me, and I set the widow's heart singing.

I put on doing right, and it wore me. Fair judgment was my robe and my turban.

I was eyes for the blind man and feet for the man who could not walk.

I was a father to people who had nothing. A stranger's lawsuit — I dug into it until I understood it.

I broke the jaw of the crooked man and tore what he had caught out of his teeth.

So I thought: I will die in my own nest, with days piled up like grains of sand.

My roots reach open water, and the dew stays all night in my branches.

My honor stays new on me, and the bow in my hand keeps finding its spring.

People listened to me and waited. They went silent for my advice.

After I spoke, no one added anything. My words fell on them like rain.

They waited for me the way a field waits for rain, mouths open for the last storms of spring.

When I smiled at them they could hardly believe it, and they never let the light of my face fall.

I chose the road for them and sat at the head of the table. I lived like a king among his troops, like a man who walks in and comforts the grieving.