Job 4

¹Then Job replied:

¹Then Bildad the Shuhite replied:

¹¹Now when Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, each of them came from his home, and they met together to go and sympathize with Job and comfort him.

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

¹Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:

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

²And this is what he said:

¹⁸For I am full of words, and my spirit within me compels me.

¹⁹Behold, my belly is like unvented wine; it is about to burst like a new wineskin.

²⁰For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

¹¹But I am full of the Lord’s wrath; I am tired of holding it back. “Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the young men gathered together. For both husband and wife will be captured, the old and the very old alike.

⁹If I say, “I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name,” His message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.

⁴For through many tears I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart, not to grieve you but to let you know how much I love you.

⁵Now if anyone has caused grief, he has not grieved me but all of you—to some degree, not to overstate it.

⁸Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Although I did regret it—for I see that my letter caused you sorrow, but only for a short time—

⁹yet now I rejoice, not because you were made sorrowful, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you felt the sorrow that God had intended, and so were not harmed in any way by us.

³Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees!

²¹The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of judgment.

¹²Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees.

³²But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

⁵But I would encourage you with my mouth, and the consolation of my lips would bring relief.

²⁹Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up the one in need and bringing grace to those who listen.

¹⁴And we urge you, brothers, to admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with everyone.

¹⁸Speaking rashly is like a piercing sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

¹⁴The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.

¹²Therefore strengthen your limp hands and weak knees.

²³The heart of the wise man instructs his mouth and adds persuasiveness to his lips.

²⁴Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

³Strengthen the limp hands and steady the feeble knees!

⁴Say to those with anxious hearts: “Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance. With divine retribution He will come to save you.”

²¹Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.

¹⁶Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.

¹¹But stretch out Your hand and strike all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.”

⁵And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not take lightly the discipline of the Lord, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you.

¹⁰If you faint in the day of distress, how small is your strength!

²⁵For the thing I feared has overtaken me, and what I dreaded has befallen me.

²⁶I am not at ease or quiet; I have no rest, for trouble has come.”

²⁶for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from the snare.

²⁶He who fears the Lord is secure in confidence, and his children shall have a place of refuge.

¹There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And this man was blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil.

¹⁵where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me?

¹¹My feet have followed in His tracks; I have kept His way without turning aside.

¹²I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread.

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

²⁵I once was young and now am old, yet never have I seen the righteous abandoned or their children begging for bread.

⁷He does not take His eyes off the righteous, but He enthrones them with kings and exalts them forever.

⁹if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

⁴When the islanders saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “Surely this man is a murderer. Although he was saved from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.”

²⁰Behold, God does not reject the blameless, nor will He strengthen the hand of evildoers.

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

²³When the scourge brings sudden death, He mocks the despair of the innocent.

⁷Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.

⁸The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

⁸He who sows injustice will reap disaster, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

⁷For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.

⁶Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

¹²Sow for yourselves righteousness and reap the fruit of loving devotion; break up your unplowed ground. For it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and sends righteousness upon you like rain.

¹³You have plowed wickedness and reaped injustice; you have eaten the fruit of lies. Because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your mighty men,

¹⁸“Your ways and deeds have brought this upon you. This is your punishment; how bitter it is, because it pierces to the heart!”

³⁰He will not escape from the darkness; the flame will wither his shoots, and the breath of God’s mouth will carry him away.

⁴but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and with equity He will decide for the lowly of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth and slay the wicked with the breath of His lips.

⁸And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of His mouth and annihilate by the majesty of His arrival.

³³For Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the king. Its funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the Lord, like a torrent of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.

¹⁶Therefore repent! Otherwise I will come to you shortly and wage war against them with the sword of My mouth.

¹⁵The channels of the sea appeared, and the foundations of the world were exposed, at Your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils.

⁶O God, shatter their teeth in their mouths; O Lord, tear out the fangs of the lions.

⁷Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.

⁴My soul is among the lions; I lie down with ravenous beasts—with men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

¹⁴there is a generation whose teeth are swords and whose jaws are knives, devouring the oppressed from the earth and the needy from among men.

¹⁵He saves the needy from the sword in their mouth and from the clutches of the powerful.

¹⁷I shattered the fangs of the unjust and snatched the prey from his teeth.

¹⁰Young lions go lacking and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

³⁹Can you hunt the prey for a lioness or satisfy the hunger of young lions

³Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?

⁴When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.

¹⁹when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

⁷A lion has gone up from his thicket, and a destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his lair to lay waste your land. Your cities will be reduced to ruins and lie uninhabited.

²or they will shred my soul like a lion and tear me to pieces with no one to rescue me.

¹⁴Indeed, these are but the fringes of His ways; how faint is the whisper we hear of Him! Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”

¹¹God has spoken once; I have heard this twice: that power belongs to God,

¹²Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹⁴For God speaks in one way and in another, yet no one notices.

¹⁵In a dream, in a vision in the night, when deep sleep falls upon men as they slumber on their beds,

²¹So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he slept, He took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the area with flesh.

¹²As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and suddenly great terror and darkness overwhelmed him.

⁹I heard the sound of his words, and as I listened, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face to the ground.

⁵I had a dream, and it frightened me; while I was in my bed, the images and visions in my mind alarmed me.

¹⁹So now, please stay here overnight as the others did, that I may find out what else the Lord has to tell me.”

²⁰That night God came to Balaam and said, “Since these men have come to summon you, get up and go with them, but you must only do what I tell you.”

¹⁷When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last,

¹⁹A man is also chastened on his bed with pain and constant distress in his bones,

¹²When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and gripped with fear.

¹⁴then You frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions,

¹²⁰My flesh trembles in awe of You; I stand in fear of Your judgments.

⁵Then I said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.”

⁷Now about the angels He says: “He makes His angels winds, His servants flames of fire.”

³⁷But they were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a spirit.

³⁸“Why are you troubled,” Jesus asked, “and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

⁴He makes the winds His messengers, flames of fire His servants.

⁶his face grew pale and his thoughts so alarmed him that his hips gave way and his knees knocked together.

³Therefore my body is filled with anguish. Pain grips me, like the pains of a woman in labor. I am bewildered to hear, I am dismayed to see.

⁴My heart falters; fear makes me tremble. The twilight I desired has turned to horror.

⁸Terror, pain, and anguish will seize them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look at one another, their faces flushed with fear.

¹²After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still, small voice.

²“Yes, I know that it is so, but how can a mortal be righteous before God?

⁴How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?

²⁰Surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

²Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.

⁹The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

³³O, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways!

⁵If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight,

⁶how much less man, who is but a maggot, and the son of man, who is but a worm!”

⁴For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;

⁶And the angels who did not stay within their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling—these He has kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day.

¹⁵If God puts no trust in His holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in His eyes,

¹⁶how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks injustice like water?

⁴He makes the winds His messengers, flames of fire His servants.

²⁰Bless the Lord, all His angels mighty in strength who carry out His word, who hearken to the voice of His command.

²¹Bless the Lord, all His hosts, you servants who do His will.

⁹Please remember that You molded me like clay. Would You now return me to dust?

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.

¹⁹By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

⁶I am just like you before God; I was also formed from clay.

¹¹You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity, consuming like a moth what he holds dear; surely each man is but a vapor. Selah

⁷Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.

⁷he will perish forever, like his own dung; those who had seen him will ask, ‘Where is he?’

²⁰Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He died, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

¹³Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may again be cheered before I depart and am no more.”

¹⁷The memory of him perishes from the earth, and he has no name in the land.

⁷The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.

⁶Nation was crushed by nation, and city by city, for God afflicted them with all kinds of adversity.

¹²But if they do not obey, then they perish by the sword and die without knowledge.

²²One day the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died and was buried.

²³In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham from afar, with Lazarus by his side.

²²Your enemies will be clothed in shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”

¹¹You discipline and correct a man for his iniquity, consuming like a moth what he holds dear; surely each man is but a vapor. Selah

²⁰But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. Then who will own what you have accumulated?’

¹⁴Like sheep they are destined for Sheol. Death will be their shepherd. The upright will rule them in the morning, and their form will decay in Sheol, far from their lofty abode.