Job (WEB) - Chapter 9

1: Then Job answered,
2: "Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
3: If he is pleased to contend with him, he can't answer him one time in a thousand.
4: God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?
5: He removes the mountains, and they don't know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
6: He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
7: He commands the sun, and it doesn't rise, and seals up the stars.
8: He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
9: He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
10: He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
11: Behold, he goes by me, and I don't see him. He passes on also, but I don't perceive him.
12: Behold, 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.
14: How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him?
15: Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn't answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.
16: If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn't believe that he listened to my voice.
17: For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
18: He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
19: If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, 'Who,' says he, 'will summon me?'
20: Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.
21: I 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.
23: If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
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?
25: "Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
26: They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
27: If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;'
28: I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.
29: I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
30: If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
31: yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
32: For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
33: There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.
34: Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;
35: then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.