Bible Browser

Job: My Suffering Is without End

7‘Do not human beings have a hard service on earth,
   and are not their days like the days of a labourer?
² Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
   and like labourers who look for their wages,
³ so I am allotted months of emptiness,
   and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
⁴ When I lie down I say, “When shall I rise?”
   But the night is long,
   and I am full of tossing until dawn.
⁵ My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;
   my skin hardens, then breaks out again.
⁶ My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
   and come to their end without hope.^*

⁷ ‘Remember that my life is a breath;
   my eye will never again see good.
⁸ The eye that beholds me will see me no more;
   while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.
⁹ As the cloud fades and vanishes,
   so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;
¹⁰ they return no more to their houses,
   nor do their places know them any more.

¹¹ ‘Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;
   I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
   I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
¹² Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,
   that you set a guard over me?
¹³ When I say, “My bed will comfort me,
   my couch will ease my complaint”,
¹⁴ then you scare me with dreams
   and terrify me with visions,
¹⁵ so that I would choose strangling
   and death rather than this body.
¹⁶ I loathe my life; I would not live for ever.
   Let me alone, for my days are a breath.
¹⁷ What are human beings, that you make so much of them,
   that you set your mind on them,
¹⁸ visit them every morning,
   test them every moment?
¹⁹ Will you not look away from me for a while,
   let me alone until I swallow my spittle?
²⁰ If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
   Why have you made me your target?
   Why have I become a burden to you?
²¹ Why do you not pardon my transgression
   and take away my iniquity?
For now I shall lie in the earth;
   you will seek me, but I shall not be.’

Bildad Speaks: Job Should Repent

8Then Bildad the Shuhite answered:
² ‘How long will you say these things,
   and the words of your mouth be a great wind?
³ Does God pervert justice?
   Or does the Almighty^* pervert the right?
⁴ If your children sinned against him,
   he delivered them into the power of their transgression.
⁵ If you will seek God
   and make supplication to the Almighty,^*
6 if you are pure and upright,
   surely then he will rouse himself for you
   and restore to you your rightful place.
⁷ Though your beginning was small,
   your latter days will be very great.

⁸ ‘For inquire now of bygone generations,
   and consider what their ancestors have found;
⁹ for we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing,
   for our days on earth are but a shadow.
¹⁰ Will they not teach you and tell you
   and utter words out of their understanding?

¹¹ ‘Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh?
   Can reeds flourish where there is no water?
¹² While yet in flower and not cut down,
   they wither before any other plant.
¹³ Such are the paths of all who forget God;
   the hope of the godless shall perish.
¹⁴ Their confidence is gossamer,
   a spider’s house their trust.
¹⁵ If one leans against its house, it will not stand;
   if one lays hold of it, it will not endure.
¹⁶ The wicked thrive^* before the sun,
   and their shoots spread over the garden.
¹⁷ Their roots twine around the stoneheap;
   they live among the rocks.^*
18 If they are destroyed from their place,
   then it will deny them, saying, “I have never seen you.”
¹⁹ See, these are their happy ways,^*
   and out of the earth still others will spring.

²⁰ ‘See, God will not reject a blameless person,
   nor take the hand of evildoers.
²¹ He will yet fill your mouth with laughter,
   and your lips with shouts of joy.
²² Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,
   and the tent of the wicked will be no more.’