Chapter 9

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 who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength:

Who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?

⁵Who removes the mountains, and they don’t know it,

When he overturns them in his anger

⁶Who shakes the earth out of its place;

The pillars of it tremble;

⁷Who commands the sun, and it doesn’t rise,

And seals up the stars;

⁸Who alone stretches out the heavens,

Treads on the waves of the sea;

⁹Who makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,

And the chambers of the south;

¹⁰Who 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 shall I answer him,

Choose my words to argue with him?

¹⁵Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer.

I would make supplication to my judge.

¹⁶If I had called, and he had answered me,

Yet would I not believe that he listened to my voice.

¹⁷For he breaks me with a tempest,

Multiplies my wounds without cause.

¹⁸He will not allow me to take 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 shall condemn me.

Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.

²¹I am blameless. I don’t regard 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 the judges of it.

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 shall 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 shall 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.