Chapter text
World English Bible
Verse-by-verse text with stable anchors, canonical chapter URLs, and copyable verse links.
- 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 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 rooms 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 will 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 will condemn me. Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.
- 21 I am blameless. I don’t respect 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 will 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 will 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.