Job 9

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.