June 11
Job 17:1 — 20:29
17 “My very spirit has been broken, my own days have been extinguished;
The graveyard is for me.
2 Certainly there is mockery at me,
And amid their rebellious behavior my eye lodges.
3 Please, do put my security with yourself.
Who else is there that will shake hands with me in pledge?
4 For their heart you have closed to discretion.
That is why you do not exalt them.
5 He may tell companions to take their shares,
But the very eyes of his sons will fail.
6 And he has set me forth as a proverbial saying of peoples,
So that I become someone into whose face to spit.
7 And from vexation my eye grows dimmer
And my members are all of them like the shadow.
8 Upright people stare in amazement at this,
And even the innocent one gets excited over the apostate.
9 The righteous one keeps holding fast to his way,
And the one with clean hands keeps increasing in strength.
10 However, YOU men may all of YOU resume. So come on, please,
As I do not find anyone wise among YOU.
11 My own days have passed along, my own plans have been torn apart,
The wishes of my heart.
12 Night they keep putting for day:
‘Light is near on account of darkness.’
13 If I keep waiting, Sheol is my house;
In the darkness I shall have to spread out my lounge.
14 To the pit I shall have to call out, ‘You are my father!’
To the maggot, ‘My mother and my sister!’
15 So where, then, is my hope?
And my hope—who is it that beholds it?
16 To the bars of Sheol they will go down,
When we, all together, must descend to the very dust.”
18 And Bildad the Shuhite proceeded to answer and say:
2 “How long will YOU people be at putting an end to words?
YOU should understand, that afterward we may speak.
3 Why should we be reckoned as beasts
[And] be regarded as unclean in YOUR eyes?
4 He is tearing his soul to pieces in his anger.
For your sake will the earth be abandoned,
Or a rock move away from its place?
5 The light also of wicked ones will be extinguished
And the spark of his fire will not shine.
6 A light itself will certainly grow dark in his tent,
And in it his own lamp will be extinguished.
7 His steps of vigor will become cramped.
Even his counsel will cast him off.
8 For he will indeed be let go into a net by his feet,
And onto a network he will walk.
9 A trap will seize [him] by the heel;
A snare keeps hold upon him.
10 A cord for him is hidden on the earth,
And a catching device for him on [his] pathway.
11 Round about, sudden terrors certainly make him start up in fright,
And indeed chase him at his feet.
12 His vigor becomes famished,
And disaster stands ready to make him limp.
13 It will eat the pieces of his skin;
The firstborn of death will eat his limbs.
14 His confidence will be torn away from his own tent
And it will march him to the king of terrors.
15 There will reside in his tent something that is not his;
Sulphur will be strewed upon his own abiding place.
16 Underneath will his very roots dry up,
And, up above, his bough will wither.
17 The very mentioning of him will certainly perish from the earth,
And he will have no name out in the street.
18 They will push him out of the light into the darkness,
And from the productive land they will chase him away.
19 He will have no posterity and no progeny among his people,
And there will be no survivor in his place of alien residence.
20 At his day the people in the West will indeed stare in amazement,
And a shudder will certainly seize even the people in the East.
21 Only these are the tabernacles of a wrongdoer,
And this is the place of one that has not known God.”
19 And Job proceeded to answer and say:
2 “How long will YOU men keep irritating my soul
And keep crushing me with words?
3 These ten times YOU proceeded to rebuke me;
YOU are not ashamed [that] YOU deal so hard with me.
4 And, granted that I have made a mistake,
It is with me that my mistake will lodge.
5 If for a fact against me YOU men do put on great airs,
And YOU show my reproach to be proper against me,
6 KNOW, then, that God himself has misled me,
And his hunting net he has closed in upon me.
7 Look! I keep crying out, ‘Violence!’ but I get no answer;
I keep crying for help, but there is no justice.
8 My very path he has blocked with a stone wall, and I cannot pass over;
And upon my roadways he puts darkness itself.
9 My own glory he has stripped from me,
And he takes away the crown of my head.
10 He pulls me down on all sides, and I go away;
And he pulls my hope out just like a tree.
11 His anger also grows hot against me,
And he keeps reckoning me as an adversary of his.
12 Unitedly his troops come and cast up their way against me,
And they camp round about my tent.
13 My own brothers he has put far away from me,
And the very ones knowing me have even turned aside from me.
14 My intimate acquaintances have ceased to be,
And those known by me have themselves forgotten me,
15 Those residing as aliens in my house; and my slave girls themselves reckon me as a stranger;
A real foreigner I have become in their eyes.
16 To my servant I have called, but he does not answer.
With my own mouth I keep imploring him for compassion.
17 My breath itself has become loathsome to my wife,
And I have become foul-smelling to the sons of my [mother’s] belly.
18 Also young boys themselves have rejected me;
Let me but rise up, and they begin to speak against me.
19 All the men of my intimate group detest me,
And those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 To my skin and to my flesh my bones actually cleave,
And I escape with the skin of my teeth.
21 Show me some favor, show me some favor, O YOU my companions,
For God’s own hand has touched me.
22 Why do YOU men keep persecuting me as God does,
And not become satisfied with my very flesh?
23 O that now my words were written down!
O that in a book they were even inscribed!
24 With an iron stylus and [with] lead,
Forever in the rock O that they were hewn!
25 And I myself well know that my redeemer is alive,
And that, coming after [me], he will rise up over [the] dust.
26 And after my skin, [which] they have skinned off,—this!
Yet reduced in my flesh I shall behold God,
27 Whom even I shall behold for myself,
And [whom] my very eyes will certainly see, but not some stranger.
My kidneys have failed deep within me.
28 For YOU men say, ‘Why do we keep persecuting him?’
When the very root of [the] matter is found in me.
29 Be frightened for yourselves because of a sword,
For the sword means a raging against errors,
In order that YOU men may know there is a judge.”
20 And Zophar the Naamathite proceeded to reply and say:
2 “Therefore do my own disquieting thoughts themselves answer me,
Even on account of my inward excitement.
3 An insulting exhortation to me I hear;
And a spirit without the understanding that I have replies to me.
4 Have you at all times known this very thing,
Since man was put upon the earth,
5 That the joyful cry of wicked people is short
And the rejoicing of an apostate is for a moment?
6 Although his excellency ascends to heaven itself
And his very head reaches to the clouds,
7 Like his manure cakes he perishes forever;
The very ones seeing him will say, ‘Where is he?’
8 Like a dream he will fly off, and they will not find him;
And he will be chased away like a vision of the night.
9 The eye that has caught sight of him will not do so again,
And no more will his place behold him.
10 His own sons will seek the favor of lowly people,
And his own hands will give back his valuable things.
11 His own bones have been full of his youthful vigor,
But with him it will lie down in mere dust.
12 If what is bad tastes sweet in his mouth,
If he causes it to melt away under his tongue,
13 If he has compassion upon it and does not leave it,
And if he keeps holding it back in the midst of his palate,
14 His food itself will certainly be changed in his own intestines;
It will be the gall of cobras within him.
15 Wealth he has swallowed down, but he will vomit it up;
God will drive it out from his very belly.
16 The venom of cobras he will suck;
The tongue of a viper will kill him.
17 He will never see the watercourses,
Torrential streams of honey and butter.
18 He will be giving back [his] acquired property and will not swallow [it] down;
Like wealth from his trade, but which he will not enjoy.
19 For he has crushed to pieces, he has left lowly ones;
He has snatched away a house itself that he did not proceed to build.
20 For he will certainly know no ease in his belly;
By means of his desirable things he will not escape.
21 There is nothing left over for him to devour;
That is why his well-being will not endure.
22 While his plenty is at its peak he will be feeling anxious;
All the power of misfortune itself will come against him.
23 Let it occur that, to fill his belly,
He will send his burning anger upon him
And will rain [it] upon him, into his bowels.
24 He will run away from armor of iron;
A bow of copper will cut him up.
25 A missile itself will even go out through his back,
And a glittering weapon out through his gall;
Frightful objects will go against him.
26 All darkness will be reserved for his treasured things;
A fire that no one fanned will eat him up;
It will go badly with a survivor in his tent.
27 Heaven will uncover his error,
And earth will be in revolt against him.
28 A heavy shower will roll his house away;
There will be things poured forth on the day of his anger.
29 This is the share of the wicked man from God,
Even his stated inheritance from God.”