Job / 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 3)

Job 29:24-31:11

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.

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.

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.