Job: How Can I Contend with God?

1Then Job answered and said,

2I know of a truth that it is so: for how shall a mortal man be just before the Lord?

3For if he would enter into judgment with him, God would not hearken to him, so that he should answer to one of his charges of a thousand.

4For he is wise in mind, and mighty, and great: who has hardened himself against him and endured?

5Who wears out the mountains, and men know it not: who overturns them in anger.

6Who shakes the earth under heaven from its foundations, and its pillars totter.

7Who commands the sun, and it rises not; and he seals up the stars.

8Who alone has stretched out the heavens, and walks on the sea as on firm ground.

9Who makes Pleias, and Hesperus, and Arcturus, and the chambers of the south.

10Who does great and unsearchable things; glorious also and excellent things, innumerable.

11If ever he should go beyond me, I shall not see him: if he should pass by me, neither thus have I known it.

12If he would take away, who shall turn him back? or who shall say to him, What hast thou done?

13For if he has turned away his anger, the whales under heaven have stooped under him.

14Oh then that he would hearken to me, or judge my cause.

15For though I be righteous, he will not hearken to me: I will intreat his judgment.

16And if I should call and he should not hearken, I cannot believe that he has listened to my voice.

17Let him not crush me with a dark storm: but he has made by bruises many without cause.

18For he suffers me not to take breath, but he has filled me with bitterness.

19For indeed he is strong in power: who then shall resist his judgment?

20For though I should seem righteous, my mouth will be profane: and though I should seem blameless, I shall be proved perverse.

21For even if I have sinned, I know it not in my soul: but my life is taken away.

22Wherefore I said, Wrath slays the great and mighty man.

23For the worthless die, but the righteous are laughed to scorn.

24For they are delivered into the hands of the unrighteous man: he covers the faces of the judges of the earth: but if it be not he, who is it?

25But my life is swifter than a post: my days have fled away, and they knew it not.

26Or again, is there a trace of their path left by ships? or is there one of the flying eagle as it seeks its prey?

27And if I should say, I will forget to speak, I will bow down my face and groan;

28I quake in all my limbs, for I know that thou wilt not leave me alone as innocent.

29But since I am ungodly, why have I not died?

30For if I should wash myself with snow, and purge myself with pure hands,

31thou hadst thoroughly plunged me in filth, and my garment had abhorred me.

32For thou art not man like me, with whom I could contend, that we might come together to judgment.

33Would that he our mediator were present, and a reprover, and one who should hear the cause between both.

34Let him remove his rod from me, and let not his fear terrify me:

35so shall I not be afraid, but I will speak: for I am not thus conscious of guilt.