Job 9 ⓘ

9:1 Then Job answered,

9:2 “Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?

9:3 If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.

9:4 God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?

9:5 He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.

9:6 He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.

9:7 He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.

9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.

9:9 He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.

9:10 He does great things past finding out; yes, marvellous things without number.

9:11 Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.

9:12 Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’

9:13 “God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.

9:14 How much less will I answer him, and choose my words to argue with him?

9:15 Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.

9:16 If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.

9:17 For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.

9:18 He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.

9:19 If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’

9:20 Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.

9:21 I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.

9:22 “It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.

9:23 If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.

9:24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?

9:25 “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good.

9:26 They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.

9:27 If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’

9:28 I am afraid of all my sorrows. I know that you will not hold me innocent.

9:29 I will be condemned. Why then do I labour in vain?

9:30 If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,

9:31 yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes will abhor me.

9:32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgement.

9:33 There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.

9:34 Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;

9:35 then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.