Job / Job Seeks God and Laments Injustice

Job Seeks God and Laments Injustice

Job 23:1-24:25

Chapter 23

¹ And Job responded and said: ² Even today my hand is heavy upon my groaning; forget my rebellion. ³ Who will give that I knew him and found him? I come to his establishment. ⁴ I will arrange a legal case before him and fill my mouth with rebukes. ⁵ I would know the words that he would answer me, and I would understand what he would say to me. ⁶ Would he contend with me in divine power? No, he would set it in me. ⁷ There the upright would stand before him, and I would be delivered in my judgment forever. ⁸ Behold, I go eastward, but he is not there; and behind me, but I do not perceive him. ⁹ To the left in his working—I do not behold him; he wraps himself on the right—I do not see. ¹⁰ For he knows the way that is with me; he tests me like gold, and I will come forth. ¹¹ In Assyria I have beheld my feet; I have kept his way and have not turned aside. ¹² The commandments of his lips—I have not departed from his statutes, which I have treasured. I have stored the words of his mouth. ¹³ And he is one, and who will turn him back? And his soul—he will make her. ¹⁴ for he completes my statutes, and many such things are with him. ¹⁵ Therefore I am dismayed at his presence. I consider myself and fear him. ¹⁶ And Shaddai has terrified the soft of my heart. ¹⁷ For I have not been parched from before darkness, and from before what has covered gloom.

Chapter 24

¹ Why are times not watched by Shaddai, and his knowers do not see his days? ² They reach boundaries; they steal a flock and pasture it. ³ They drive away the orphans' donkey; they seize the widow's ox. ⁴ They turn the poor aside from the way; the afflicted of the earth hide themselves together. ⁵ Behold, wild donkeys in the wilderness go out in their work, seeking from daybreak to raid the plains for bread for their boys. ⁶ In the field, at night, they reap, and they glean the vineyard of the wicked. ⁷ They lie down naked, without clothing, and have no covering in the cold. ⁸ They are drenched by the downpour from the mountains, and without refuge they embrace the Rock. ⁹ They rob from the breast of an orphan, and over the afflicted they take the child as a pledge. ¹⁰ They walked about naked, lacking clothing, and hungry they bore sheaves. ¹¹ Between their rows they press his winepresses, yet they thirst. ¹² From the city of refuge the dead bodies groan, and the vital life force of the profaned ones cries out, but God does not set prayer. ¹³ They are rebels against light. They do not acknowledge his ways, nor do they sit in his pathways. ¹⁴ At light the murderer rises; he kills the afflicted and needy, and at night he is like a thief. ¹⁵ And the eye of the adulterer watches for the night, saying, "No eye will see me," and he sets his face in hiding. ¹⁶ They dig houses in the darkness; by day they seal them for themselves—they do not know light. ¹⁷ For morning is darkness to them, and they know the terrors of the shadow of death. ¹⁸ He is light on the face of the waters; their portion is cursed in the land. He does not turn toward the way of vineyards. ¹⁹ Drought and heat also rob from the days of snow; Saul has sinned. ²⁰ The womb will forget him, the hope of the worm. He will no longer be remembered, and she will break like a tree a child. ²¹ He befriends the barren woman who does not bear, and he does not do good to the widow. ²² He draws away the mighty by his strength; he rises up, and no one believes in their life. ²³ He gives him security, and he leans on it, and his eyes are upon their ways. ²⁴ They are raised a little and not, and the struck like all are winnowed, and like a head of שבלת they are circumcised. ²⁵ And if not, who will prove me false and not set my word to God?