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Job / Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 3)
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Job's Righteousness and Prosperity The Accuser's Challenge and Job's Calamities Satan's Second Test and Job's Endurance Job's Friends Visit and Mourn Silently Job's Lament: Cursing the Day of His Birth Eliphaz's Accusation and Counsel (part 1) Eliphaz's Accusation and Counsel (part 2) Job's Protest and Despair (part 1) Job's Protest and Despair (part 2) Bildad's Assertion of Retributive Justice Job on God's Sovereignty and His Complaint (part 1) Job on God's Sovereignty and His Complaint (part 2) Zophar's Rebuke and Call to Repentance Job on God's Power and Human Mortality (part 1) Job on God's Power and Human Mortality (part 2) Eliphaz Reproves Job and Defends Retribution Job's Lament and Plea for a Mediator Bildad's Description of the Wicked's Doom Job's Lament, Isolation, and Declaration of Hope Zophar on the Swift Punishment of the Wicked Job Challenges Retribution Theology Eliphaz Accuses Job and Urges Repentance Job Seeks God and Laments Injustice Bildad on God's Majesty and Human Insignificance Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 1) Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 2) Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 3) Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 4) Elihu's Intervention: Rebuke and Praise of God's Majesty (part 1) Elihu's Intervention: Rebuke and Praise of God's Majesty (part 2) Elihu's Intervention: Rebuke and Praise of God's Majesty (part 3) Elihu's Intervention: Rebuke and Praise of God's Majesty (part 4) God's Response from the Whirlwind and the Wonders of Creation (part 1) God's Response from the Whirlwind and the Wonders of Creation (part 2) God's Response from the Whirlwind and the Wonders of Creation (part 3) Job's Confession and Repentance God Rebukes the Friends and Restores Job

Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 3)

Job 29:24-31:11

29
Chapter 29
24 I laugh at them—they do not believe it—and they do not cast down the light of my face. 25 I chose their way and sat as head and dwelt like a king in the troop, as when one comforts mourners.
30
Chapter 30
1 And now younger men than me in days have mocked me, those whose fathers I rejected to set with the dogs of my flock. 2 Indeed, the strength of their hands—what use to me? They have perished like a moth. 3 gaunt from lack and hunger, fugitives yesterday in the wasteland, toward desolation and a burden at dusk. 4 They pluck the salty ones, leaves of the shrub, and root of broomplants—their bread. 5 From a people they drive them out; they shout at him like a thief. 6 In ravines of torrents to dwell, in the heat of dust and with outstretched hands. 7 Among the bushes they groan; under the thornbushes they cling together. 8 Sons of a worthless man, even sons without a name, who have been thrust out from the land. 9 And now I have become their taunt-song, and I am their mockery. 10 They abhor me and keep far from me, away from my face; they do not even hide. 11 For they have let me loose; he opened, and they humbled me, and they sent a bridle from their face. 12 On the right hand wild youths rise up; they cast my feet and pave for me paths of their calamity. 13 They have paved my paths to disaster; they set out help not for them. 14 Like a wide breach they come; under tumult they rolled themselves. 15 Reversals upon me—terror pursues my voluntary offering like a wind, and like a cloud that has passed—my salvation. 16 And now my nephesh pours out upon me; the days of oppression seize me. 17 Night pierces my bones upon me, and my pains will not lie down. 18 With an abundance of chief officers, my garment releases itself; like my tunic, my outstretched hand girds me. 19 Here I am like clay, and I am disfigured like dust and sackcloth. 20 I cried out to you, and you did not answer me; I stood, and you looked intently at me. 21 You turn cruel to me with your hand's strength; you harbor enmity against me. 22 You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it and terrify me—tushiyah. 23 For I know that death will return me there, to the house of meeting for all living. 24 Yet he does not stretch out his hand in calamity. If in his ruin they cry out to him. 25 If I did not weep for the hard day, did my soul grieve for the poor? 26 I hoped for good, but evil came; I waited for light, but darkness came. 27 My inward parts boiled and did not rest; days of oppression went before me. 28 I walked in cosmic mourning; without divine wrath I arose in the assembly; I cried out in the cultic assembly. 29 I have become a brother to jackals and a companion to daughters of the ostrich. 30 My skin has turned black on me, and my bones have burned from a sword. 31 And my lyre was for mourning, and my reed-pipe for the sound of weeping.
31
Chapter 31
1 I made a covenant for my eyes. How then could I gaze upon a virgin? 2 And what portion from God for a trespass, and what inheritance from Shaddai for heights? 3 Is not calamity for iniquity and estrangement for the deeds of the North? 4 Does he not see my ways and number all my steps? 5 If I have walked with falsehood and my feet have hastened over deceit, 6 May he weigh me in balances of righteousness, and let God know my blamelessness. 7 If my step has turned aside from the way and my eye has gone after and my heart has walked and my hand has clung to a nothing— 8 then my arm and another will eat it, and my offspring will be rooted up. 9 If my heart was enticed by a woman, and I lay in wait at my neighbor's door— 10 She grinds on another, my woman, and others kneel upon her. 11 For it is zimmah, and it is an iniquity of judicial crimes.