Job 33 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
All the same, Job — hear me out. Listen to every word of it.
Look, I have opened my mouth. My tongue is already moving in there.
What I say comes straight out of my heart. My lips know what they are talking about, and they say it clean.
The of me. The of the Almighty keeps me alive.
Answer me back, if you can. Line up in front of me and stand there.
Look — in front of God I am exactly what you are. I was out of the same you were.
No of is to you. No hand of is to come down heavy on you.
But you have said it where I could hear — I heard the sound of the words —
I am clean. There is no in me. I am innocent, and no is on me.
Look — he keeps digging up grounds against me. He me as
He puts my feet in the stocks. He watches every path I take.
Here is the one place you are not in the right, and here is my answer: God is bigger than any human being.
Why do you over this — that he gives no account of anything he does?
Because God does speak — one way, then another way — and nobody notices.
In a dream. In a vision at night, when drops on people and they are lying there in their beds.
That is when he their ear and stamps the warning shut inside them.
To turn a man back from something he was about to do, to bury a man's swagger.
To hold his life back from the pit, to keep him from walking onto the blade.
Or a man gets corrected by pain on his own bed, by an argument in his bones that never lets up.
His own life turns against bread. He cannot look at the food he used to want.
His flesh wears away until there is nothing to look at. Bones nobody could see before are standing out of him.
His life comes right up to the pit. He is close enough to touch the ones who deal out death.
Then, if there is a messenger for him — one who can on behalf, one out of a thousand — to tell a man what is right for him,
then is to and says, Spare from going down to the pit. I have found the that
His flesh goes fresher than a boy's. He gets back the when he was
He prays to and takes him back. He in the and shouts, and the — a in the right.
He sings it out where everyone can hear: I failed. I bent what was straight, and it got me nothing.
He bought my life back from crossing into the pit, and my life is going to see the light.
Look — God does every bit of this. Twice. Three times. With one man.
To bring a life back from the pit, so the of the can shine on him.
Pay attention, Job. Listen to me. Be and I will do the
If you have anything to say, answer me back. Speak up — there is nothing I would like better than to see you cleared.
And if you have nothing, then you listen to me. Be quiet, and I will teach you wisdom.