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Then Job answered,
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“Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
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If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.
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God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?
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He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
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He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
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He commands the sun, and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.
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He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
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He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.
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He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
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Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
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Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
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“God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.
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How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him?
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Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.
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If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.
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For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
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He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
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If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’
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Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.
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I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.
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“It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
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If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
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The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?
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“Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
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They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
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If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;’
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I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.
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I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
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If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
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yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
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For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
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There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.
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Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;
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then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.