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.⋮