Job / Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 4)

Job's Extended Defense: God's Power and the Friends' Failings (part 4)

Job 31:12-40

Chapter 31

¹² For it is fire; it will eat as far as Abaddon, and it will uproot all my harvest-produce. ¹³ If I reject the justice due my servant or my slave girl when they take their dispute to me. ¹⁴ What shall I do when God arises, and when he visits? What shall I return to him? ¹⁵ Did he not make me in the womb, make him, and form us both in the belly? ¹⁶ If I withheld from the delight of the poor, and the eyes of the widow ate. ¹⁷ And I ate my bread alone, and an orphan did not eat from it. ¹⁸ For from my youth it grew me up as a father, and from my mother's womb I guided her. ¹⁹ If I see one perishing without clothing, and there is no covering for the poor, ²⁰ If his loins have not blessed me, and he warmed himself from the fleece of his lambs. ²¹ If I raised my hand against an orphan, because I saw my help at the gate. ²² My shoulder will fall from the shoulder blade, and my arm bones will be broken from the reed. ²³ For terror of God, his disaster and his uplifting I cannot endure. ²⁴ If I have set gold as my bags, and to refined gold I have said, "My trust," ²⁵ If I rejoice because my wealth is great and because my hand has found abundance— ²⁶ If I saw the light when it shone and the precious moon walking. ²⁷ and it seduced me in the hiding-place of my heart, and my hand kissed my mouth. ²⁸ This too is an iniquity requiring judgment, for I have denied God from above. ²⁹ If I rejoiced at the disaster of my hater, and exulted when evil found him— ³⁰ And I did not give my palate to Sin to ask with a covenant curse for his vital life force. ³¹ If they did not say, "Who will give us his flesh? We will not swear by it." ³² The stranger does not lodge outside; I open my door to the traveler. ³³ if I have covered my transgression like Adam, to hide my iniquity in my bosom. ³⁴ For I feared a great multitude, and contempt of families frightened me, so that I did not go out the door. ³⁵ Who will grant me this—that he may hear me! Here is my witness, Shaddai—he will answer me—and a document; let a man write my dispute! ³⁶ If I do not bear it on my shoulder, I bind it as crowns on me. ³⁷ To recount my steps, I will tell it to him; like a prince, I will present it to him. ³⁸ If it cries out over my ground and its furrows weep together— ³⁹ If I ate her cosmic power without silver and I diminished her soul of its owner. ⁴⁰ In place of wheat, briers came out, and in place of barley, stench. The words of Job ended.