Chronological Plan

¹“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?

²There are those who move boundary stones; they pasture flocks they have stolen.

³They drive away the orphan’s donkey and take the widow’s ox in pledge.

⁴They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding.

⁵Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children.

⁶They gather fodder in the fields and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.

⁷Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked; they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.

⁸They are drenched by mountain rains and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.

⁹The fatherless child is snatched from the breast; the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.

¹⁰Lacking clothes, they go about naked; they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

¹¹They crush olives among the terraces; they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.

¹²The groans of the dying rise from the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out for help. But God charges no one with wrongdoing.

¹³“There are those who rebel against the light, who do not know its ways or stay in its paths.

¹⁴When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up, kills the poor and needy, and in the night steals forth like a thief.

¹⁵The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk; he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’ and he keeps his face concealed.

¹⁶In the dark, thieves break into houses, but by day they shut themselves in; they want nothing to do with the light.

¹⁷For all of them, midnight is their morning; they make friends with the terrors of darkness.

¹⁸“Yet they are foam on the surface of the water; their portion of the land is cursed, so that no one goes to the vineyards.

¹⁹As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow, so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.

²⁰The womb forgets them, the worm feasts on them; the wicked are no longer remembered but are broken like a tree.

²¹They prey on the barren and childless woman, and to the widow they show no kindness.

²²But God drags away the mighty by his power; though they become established, they have no assurance of life.

²³He may let them rest in a feeling of security, but his eyes are on their ways.

²⁴For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone; they are brought low and gathered up like all others; they are cut off like heads of grain.

²⁵“If this is not so, who can prove me false and reduce my words to nothing?”

¹Then Bildad the Shuhite replied:

²“Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven.

³Can his forces be numbered? On whom does his light not rise?

⁴How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure?

⁵If even the moon is not bright and the stars are not pure in his eyes,

⁶how much less a mortal, who is but a maggot— a human being, who is only a worm!”

¹Then Job replied:

²“How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm that is feeble!

³What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what great insight you have displayed!

⁴Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?

⁵“The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all that live in them.

⁶The realm of the dead is naked before God; Destruction lies uncovered.

⁷He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.

⁸He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.

⁹He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it.

¹⁰He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.

¹¹The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke.

¹²By his power he churned up the sea; by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.

¹³By his breath the skies became fair; his hand pierced the gliding serpent.

¹⁴And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”

¹And Job continued his discourse:

²“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made my life bitter,

³as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils,

⁴my lips will not say anything wicked, and my tongue will not utter lies.

⁵I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity.

⁶I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.

⁷“May my enemy be like the wicked, my adversary like the unjust!

⁸For what hope have the godless when they are cut off, when God takes away their life?

⁹Does God listen to their cry when distress comes upon them?

¹⁰Will they find delight in the Almighty? Will they call on God at all times?

¹¹“I will teach you about the power of God; the ways of the Almighty I will not conceal.

¹²You have all seen this yourselves. Why then this meaningless talk?

¹³“Here is the fate God allots to the wicked, the heritage a ruthless man receives from the Almighty:

¹⁴However many his children, their fate is the sword; his offspring will never have enough to eat.

¹⁵The plague will bury those who survive him, and their widows will not weep for them.

¹⁶Though he heaps up silver like dust and clothes like piles of clay,

¹⁷what he lays up the righteous will wear, and the innocent will divide his silver.

¹⁸The house he builds is like a moth’s cocoon, like a hut made by a watchman.

¹⁹He lies down wealthy, but will do so no more; when he opens his eyes, all is gone.

²⁰Terrors overtake him like a flood; a tempest snatches him away in the night.

²¹The east wind carries him off, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place.

²²It hurls itself against him without mercy as he flees headlong from its power.

²³It claps its hands in derision and hisses him out of his place.”

¹There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined.

²Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore.

³Mortals put an end to the darkness; they search out the farthest recesses for ore in the blackest darkness.

⁴Far from human dwellings they cut a shaft, in places untouched by human feet; far from other people they dangle and sway.

⁵The earth, from which food comes, is transformed below as by fire;

⁶lapis lazuli comes from its rocks, and its dust contains nuggets of gold.

⁷No bird of prey knows that hidden path, no falcon’s eye has seen it.

⁸Proud beasts do not set foot on it, and no lion prowls there.

⁹People assault the flinty rock with their hands and lay bare the roots of the mountains.

¹⁰They tunnel through the rock; their eyes see all its treasures.

¹¹They search the sources of the rivers and bring hidden things to light.

¹²But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell?

¹³No mortal comprehends its worth; it cannot be found in the land of the living.

¹⁴The deep says, “It is not in me”; the sea says, “It is not with me.”

¹⁵It cannot be bought with the finest gold, nor can its price be weighed out in silver.

¹⁶It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir, with precious onyx or lapis lazuli.

¹⁷Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it, nor can it be had for jewels of gold.

¹⁸Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention; the price of wisdom is beyond rubies.

¹⁹The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it; it cannot be bought with pure gold.

²⁰Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell?

²¹It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds in the sky.

²²Destruction and Death say, “Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.”

²³God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells,

²⁴for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.

²⁵When he established the force of the wind and measured out the waters,

²⁶when he made a decree for the rain and a path for the thunderstorm,

²⁷then he looked at wisdom and appraised it; he confirmed it and tested it.

²⁸And he said to the human race, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.”