Old Testament · Poetry and wisdom

Job chapter 9

Then Job answered:Yes — I know all of that is true. But how can a ever be against God?If a man wanted to , he could not answer one question in a thousand.His mind runs deep, his strength is enormous — who ever hardened himself against him and ?He moves mountains, and they never know it; he turns them over in his anger.He shakes the earth loose from its place, and the underneath it shudder.He tells the sun not to rise, and it doesn’t. He the stars.He stretched out the sky by himself, and he walks on .He made , and the starry rooms of the south.He does , wonders past counting.Look — he goes right past me and I never see him; he moves on and I never know he was there.If he snatches something away, who can make him hand it back? Who is going to ask him, “What do you think you’re doing?”God does not call his anger back. Even the helpers of lie crushed under his feet.So how could I answer him? How would I even choose my words against him?Even if I were in the right, I could not answer — I could only .If I summoned him and he actually came, I still would not believe he was listening to me.He is the one who crushes me in a storm and piles up my wounds .He won’t let me catch my breath — he fills me to the brim with bitterness.If it comes down to strength — look at him. If it comes down to justice — who can ?Even if I were in the right, my own mouth would convict me. Even if I were , it would twist me into something crooked.I am blameless. I don’t even care about myself anymore. I have had enough of my own life.It makes no difference — that is why I say it: he wipes out .When some disaster kills without warning, he laughs at the despair of people who did nothing wrong.The earth is handed over to the guilty; he blindfolds the faces of its judges. If it isn’t him, then who is it?My days run faster than — they are gone before they see anything good.They slip past like , like an eagle dropping on its food.If I tell myself, “I’ll drop my complaint, I’ll change my face and smile,”I am still afraid of every ache I have, because I know will never treat me as innocent.I am going to be found guilty anyway. So why wear myself out ?If I scrubbed myself with snow and washed my hands with ,you would drop me into a pit of filth until even my own clothes couldn’t stand the sight of me.He isn’t a man like me, so that I could answer him, so that the two of us could walk into court together.There is , no one who can lay a hand on us both.Let him lift his stick off me, let his terror stop making me flinch —then I would speak, and I would not be afraid of him. But that is not how things stand with me.