Job 35

³⁶But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

³⁷For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

¹⁷For He would crush me with a tempest and multiply my wounds without cause.

⁵For Job has declared, ‘I am righteous, yet God has deprived me of justice.

¹⁷yet my hands are free of violence and my prayer is pure.

⁶then understand that it is God who has wronged me and drawn His net around me.

⁷Though I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.

²²His master replied, ‘You wicked servant, I will judge you by your own words. So you knew that I am a harsh man, withdrawing what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow?

⁹For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should delight in God.’

¹⁴You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What have we gained by keeping His requirements and walking mournfully before the Lord of Hosts?

²¹Though I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life.

²²It is all the same, and so I say, ‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’

¹³Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure; in innocence I have washed my hands.

²For what is the allotment of God from above, or the heritage from the Almighty on high?

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

³¹then You would plunge me into the pit, and even my own clothes would despise me.

⁸He keeps company with evildoers and walks with wicked men.

²⁰He who walks with the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.

¹²Is not God as high as the heavens? Look at the highest stars, how lofty they are!

⁹“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

³The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.

²²He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth; its dwellers are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

²³He brings the princes to nothing and makes the rulers of the earth meaningless.

¹⁶Do you understand how the clouds float, those wonders of Him who is perfect in knowledge?

²²Out of the north He comes in golden splendor; awesome majesty surrounds Him.

²³The Almighty is beyond our reach; He is exalted in power! In His justice and great righteousness He does not oppress.

¹⁹But am I the One they are provoking? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves they spite, to their own shame?

³⁶But he who fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”

¹²If you are wise, you are wise to your own advantage; but if you scoff, you alone will bear the consequences.

²I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.”

²“Can a man be of use to God? Can even a wise man benefit Him?

³Does it delight the Almighty that you are righteous? Does He profit if your ways are blameless?

¹⁰So you also, when you have done everything commanded of you, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

¹²If you are wise, you are wise to your own advantage; but if you scoff, you alone will bear the consequences.

³⁵“Who has first given to God, that God should repay him?”

¹⁴But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we have given to You.

¹²“Pick me up,” he answered, “and cast me into the sea, so it may quiet down for you. For I know that I am to blame for this violent storm that has come upon you.”

³⁰But Phinehas stood and intervened, and the plague was restrained.

⁷By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in godly fear built an ark to save his family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

⁸So now, take seven bulls and seven rams, go to My servant Job, and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. Then My servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken accurately about Me, as My servant Job has.”

²I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

²⁹So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.

²³After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from bondage ascended to God.

²⁸They caused the cry of the poor to come before Him, and He heard the outcry of the afflicted.

⁹And now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen how severely the Egyptians are oppressing them.

⁵“For the cause of the oppressed and for the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will bring safety to him who yearns.”

¹About that time there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews.

²Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous. We must get grain in order to eat and stay alive.”

¹⁵Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call him to account for his wickedness until none is left to be found.

⁸The Lord decrees His loving devotion by day, and at night His song is with me as a prayer to the God of my life.

²⁵About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

⁵Let the saints exult in glory; let them shout for joy upon their beds.

⁶At night I remembered my song; in my heart I mused, and my spirit pondered:

¹³But you have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. You live in terror all day long because of the fury of the oppressor who is bent on destruction. But where is the fury of the oppressor?

⁵For your husband is your Maker—the Lord of Hosts is His name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth.

¹²Blessed is the man You discipline, O Lord, and teach from Your law,

²²Behold, God is exalted in His power. Who is a teacher like Him?

⁸But there is a spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding.

²⁶Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.”

⁷Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

²⁸Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will earnestly seek me, but will not find me.

³¹We know that God does not listen to sinners, but He does listen to the one who worships Him and does His will.

³Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy, for we have endured much contempt.

⁴We have endured much scorn from the arrogant, much contempt from the proud.

¹⁴I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

¹⁵But you will be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.

⁶Therefore pride is their necklace; a garment of violence covers them.

⁷From their prosperity proceeds iniquity; the imaginations of their hearts run wild.

⁴¹They cried for help, but there was no one to save them—to the Lord, but He did not answer.

²⁹The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous.

³And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures.

¹¹Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to bring upon them a disaster that they cannot escape. They will cry out to Me, but I will not listen to them.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.

⁸The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.

¹⁴They do not cry out to Me from their hearts when they wail upon their beds. They slash themselves for grain and new wine, but turn away from Me.

¹¹Were He to pass by me, I would not see Him; were He to move, I would not recognize Him.

³If only I knew where to find Him, so that I could go to His seat.

¹⁸Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore He rises to show you compassion, for the Lord is a just God. Blessed are all who wait for Him.

¹⁹If it is a matter of strength, He is indeed mighty! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon Him?

⁵Rest in God alone, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him.

¹²Do not hand me over to the will of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence.

¹³Still I am certain to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

³²I will attend to their transgression with the rod, and to their iniquity with stripes.

¹⁵Terrors are turned loose against me; they drive away my dignity as by the wind, and my prosperity has passed like a cloud.

¹⁶And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction grip me.

¹¹No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it.

¹²Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees.

¹⁵Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. I will still defend my ways to His face.

⁸How could I give you up, O Ephraim? How could I surrender you, O Israel? How could I make you like Admah? How could I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned within Me; My compassion is stirred!

⁹I will not execute the full fury of My anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man—the Holy One among you—and I will not come in wrath.

²⁰And now you will be silent and unable to speak until the day this comes to pass, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”

²“Who is this who obscures My counsel by words without knowledge?

³⁵‘Job speaks without knowledge; his words lack insight.’

³⁶If only Job were tried to the utmost for answering like a wicked man.

⁸Surely you have spoken in my hearing, and I have heard these very words:

⁹‘I am pure, without transgression; I am clean, with no iniquity in me.

²Behold, I will open my mouth; my address is on the tip of my tongue.

¹After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.