Job 7

⁵Since his days are determined and the number of his months is with You, and since You have set limits that he cannot exceed,

⁶look away from him and let him rest, so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.

⁴“Show me, O Lord, my end and the measure of my days. Let me know how fleeting my life is.

⁷Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.

¹³If only You would hide me in Sheol and conceal me until Your anger has passed! If only You would appoint a time for me and then remember me!

¹⁴When a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait, until my renewal comes.

⁵⁰He and his purchaser will then count the time from the year he sold himself up to the Year of Jubilee. The price of his sale will be determined by the number of years, based on the daily wages of a hired hand.

¹⁸Do not regard it as a hardship to set your servant free, because his six years of service were worth twice the wages of a hired hand. And the Lord your God will bless you in all you do.

¹³You must not defraud your neighbor or rob him. You must not withhold until morning the wages due a hired hand.

¹⁵You are to pay his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and depends on them. Otherwise he may cry out to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

⁴Look, the wages you withheld from the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

⁵“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the Lord of Hosts.

⁴‘Prepare for battle against her; rise up, let us attack at noon. Woe to us, for the daylight is fading; the evening shadows grow long.

⁶I stretch out my hands to You; my soul thirsts for You like a parched land. Selah

⁶I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

¹⁴I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.

⁷Surely He has now exhausted me; You have devastated all my family.

²“How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me,

⁵You, indeed, have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing before You. Truly each man at his best exists as but a breath. Selah

⁶⁷In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.

¹³When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint,

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

⁴You have kept my eyes from closing; I am too troubled to speak.

⁶I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

⁶My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.

¹⁷Night pierces my bones, and my gnawing pains never rest.

¹¹Your pomp has been brought down to Sheol, along with the music of your harps. Maggots are your bed and worms your blanket.

¹⁴and say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’

⁷So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

⁸And Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself as he sat among the ashes.

⁶From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness—only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil.

²³Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

²⁴“As they go forth, they will see the corpses of the men who have rebelled against Me; for their worm will never die, their fire will never be quenched, and they will be a horror to all mankind.”

²⁵My days are swifter than a runner; they flee without seeing good.

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

¹¹My days have passed; my plans are broken off—even the desires of my heart.

¹²My dwelling has been picked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; He cuts me off from the loom; from day until night You make an end of me.

¹³I composed myself until the morning. Like a lion He breaks all my bones; from day until night You make an end of me.

⁶A voice says, “Cry out!” And I asked, “What should I cry out?” “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field.

⁷The grass withers and the flowers fall when the breath of the Lord blows on them; indeed, the people are grass.

²⁴For, “All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall,

¹⁴You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

³⁹He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.

¹⁵You understand, O Lord; remember me and attend to me. Avenge me against my persecutors. In Your patience, do not take me away. Know that I endure reproach for Your honor.

⁴⁷Remember the briefness of my lifespan! For what futility You have created all men!

²¹before I go—never to return—to a land of darkness and gloom,

²²to a land of utter darkness, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.”

¹⁸Remember how the enemy has mocked You, O Lord, how a foolish people has spurned Your name.

⁹The eye that saw him will see him no more, and his place will no longer behold him.

³⁶yet he passed away and was no more; though I searched, he could not be found.

¹⁸If he is uprooted from his place, it will disown him, saying, ‘I never saw you.’

⁸You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your presence.

⁹For all our days decline in Your fury; we finish our years with a sigh.

²⁷You put my feet in the stocks and stand watch over all my paths; You set a limit for the soles of my feet.

³Do You open Your eyes to one like this? Will You bring him into judgment before You?

²¹before I go—never to return—to a land of darkness and gloom,

¹⁴For we will surely die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be recovered. Yet God does not take away a life, but He devises ways that the banished one may not be cast out from Him.

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

²²For when only a few years are past I will go the way of no return.

¹⁰But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last, and where is he?

¹¹As water disappears from the sea and a river becomes parched and dry,

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

¹⁸If he is uprooted from his place, it will disown him, saying, ‘I never saw you.’

⁹The eye that saw him will see him no more, and his place will no longer behold him.

¹⁶when the wind passes over, it vanishes, and its place remembers it no more.

²³It claps its hands at him and hisses him out of his place.

²¹The east wind carries him away, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place.

¹⁰In her bitter distress, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many tears.

⁹I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; behold, I do not seal my lips, as You, O Lord, do know.

¹“I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.

¹⁵What can I say? He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done this. I will walk slowly all my years because of the anguish of my soul.

²⁵Yet another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, having never tasted prosperity.

¹⁷Surely for my own welfare I had such great anguish; but Your love has delivered me from the pit of oblivion, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.

¹⁷What is man that You should exalt him, that You should set Your heart upon him,

⁷He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.

²“Son of man, take up a lament for Pharaoh king of Egypt and say to him: ‘You are like a lion among the nations; you are like a monster in the seas. You thrash about in your rivers, churning up the waters with your feet and muddying the streams.’

³This is what the Lord God says: ‘I will spread My net over you with a company of many peoples, and they will draw you up in My net.

⁶On what were its foundations set, or who laid its cornerstone,

⁷while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

¹“Can you pull in Leviathan with a hook or tie down his tongue with a rope?

²Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?

⁶I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

⁴You have kept my eyes from closing; I am too troubled to speak.

³So I am allotted months of futility, and nights of misery are appointed to me.

⁴When I lie down I think: ‘When will I get up?’ But the night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn.

²⁷If I were to say, ‘I will forget my complaint and change my expression and smile,’

²⁸I would still dread all my sufferings; I know that You will not acquit me.

⁸In the morning his spirit was troubled, so he summoned all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him.

¹In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams that troubled his spirit, and sleep escaped him.

⁵both of these men—the Egyptian king’s cupbearer and baker, who were being held in the prison—had a dream on the same night, and each dream had its own meaning.

⁶When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were distraught.

¹³And as Gideon arrived, a man was telling his friend about a dream. “Behold, I had a dream,” he said, “and I saw a loaf of barley bread come tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent so hard that the tent overturned and collapsed.”

¹⁴His friend replied: “This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite. God has delivered Midian and the whole camp into his hand.”

¹⁹While Pilate was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him this message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered terribly in a dream today because of Him.”

⁵So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

²³When Ahithophel saw that his advice had not been followed, he saddled his donkey and set out for his house in his hometown. He put his affairs in order and hanged himself. So he died and was buried in his father’s tomb.

⁴while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”

¹“I loathe my own life; I will express my complaint and speak in the bitterness of my soul.

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

⁶look away from him and let him rest, so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.

⁹Lowborn men are but a vapor; the exalted are but a lie. Weighed on the scale, they go up; together they are but a vapor.

²⁰Are my days not few? Withdraw from me, that I may have a little comfort,

⁶But somewhere it is testified in these words: “What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him?

⁴what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him?

³O Lord, what is man, that You regard him, the son of man that You think of him?

¹⁴If He were to set His heart to it and withdraw His Spirit and breath,

¹⁵all flesh would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.

¹²Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, that You must keep me under guard?

⁷so that the proven character of your faith—more precious than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

⁷Therefore this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “Behold, I will refine them and test them, for what else can I do because of the daughter of My people?

¹²My dwelling has been picked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; He cuts me off from the loom; from day until night You make an end of me.

¹³I composed myself until the morning. Like a lion He breaks all my bones; from day until night You make an end of me.

³Do You open Your eyes to one like this? Will You bring him into judgment before You?

¹Some time later God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered.

⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,

¹⁸He does not let me catch my breath, but overwhelms me with bitterness.

¹For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?

²How long must I wrestle in my soul, with sorrow in my heart each day? How long will my enemy dominate me?

⁶look away from him and let him rest, so he can enjoy his day as a hired hand.

³My soul is deeply distressed. How long, O Lord, how long?

³How long will the wicked, O Lord, how long will the wicked exult?

¹⁰And they cried out in a loud voice, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge those who dwell upon the earth and avenge our blood?”

¹²He bent His bow and set me as the target for His arrow.

⁶Your righteousness is like the highest mountains; Your judgments are like the deepest sea. O Lord, You preserve man and beast.

²⁴I sigh when food is put before me, and my groans pour out like water.

¹¹Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

¹²Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, that You must keep me under guard?

¹²For You will put them to flight when Your bow is trained upon them.

¹²I was at ease, but He shattered me; He seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has set me up as His target;

¹³His archers surround me. He pierces my kidneys without mercy and spills my gall on the ground.

¹⁴If I sinned, You would take note, and would not acquit me of my iniquity.

²And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt.

⁹If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

²⁰Why have You forgotten us forever? Why have You forsaken us for so long?

²¹Restore us to Yourself, O Lord, so we may return; renew our days as of old,

⁹Do not be angry, O Lord, beyond measure; do not remember our iniquity forever. Oh, look upon us, we pray; we are all Your people!

⁷before the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to God who gave it.