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9Then Job answered:

10“I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. ²I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. ³Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked? ⁴Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see? ⁵Are your days like the days of mortals, or your years like human years, ⁶that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin, ⁷although you know that I am not guilty, and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?

⁸Your hands fashioned and made me; and now you turn and destroy me. ⁹Remember that you fashioned me like clay; and will you turn me to dust again? ¹⁶Bold as a lion you hunt me; you repeat your exploits against me. ¹⁷You renew your witnesses against me, and increase your vexation toward me; you bring fresh troops against me. ¹⁸“Why did you bring me forth from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, ¹⁹and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave. ²⁰Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort ²¹before I go, never to return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, ²²the land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness.”

11Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”