¹Then Job answered, 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.