Job Responds: No Mediator for Me

¹Then Job answered,

²“Truly I know that it is so,

but how can humankind be justified with God?

³If one wanted to contend with ʜɪᴍ,

he can’t answer ʜɪᴍ one time in a thousand.

⁴God is wise in heart and mighty in strength.

Who has hardened himself against ʜɪᴍ and prospered?

⁵Hᴇ removes the mountains without their knowing it,

when ʜᴇ overturns them in ʜɪꜱ anger.

⁶Hᴇ shakes the earth out of its place.

Its pillars tremble.

⁷Hᴇ commands the sun and it doesn’t rise,

and seals up the stars.

⁸Hᴇ alone stretches out the heavens,

and treads on the waves of the sea.

⁹Hᴇ makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,

and the rooms of the south.

¹⁰Hᴇ does great things past finding out;

yes, marvelous things without number.

¹¹Look, he goes by me, and I don’t see ʜɪᴍ.

Hᴇ passes on, but I don’t perceive ʜɪᴍ.

¹²If he snatches something away,

who can hinder ʜɪᴍ?

Who can ask ʜɪᴍ, ‘What are you doing?’

¹³“God will not withdraw ʜɪꜱ anger.

The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.

¹⁴How much less will I answer ʜɪᴍ,

and choose my words to argue with ʜɪᴍ?

¹⁵Even if I were righteous, I wouldn’t answer ʜɪᴍ.

I would make supplication to my judge.

¹⁶If I had called and ʜᴇ had answered me,

I wouldn’t believe that ʜᴇ listened to my voice.

¹⁷For ʜᴇ breaks me with a storm,

and multiplies my wounds without cause.

¹⁸Hᴇ will not allow me to catch my breath,

but fills me with bitterness.

¹⁹If it is a matter of strength, look, ʜᴇ is mighty!

If it is a matter of justice, ʜᴇ will say, ‘Who can will summon me?’

²⁰Though I am righteous, my own mouth will condemn me.

Though I am blameless, it will prove me perverse.

²¹I am blameless.

I don’t respect myself.

I despise my life.

²²“It is all the same.

Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.

²³If the scourge kills suddenly,

he will mock at the trial of the innocent.

²⁴The earth is given into the hand of the wicked.

He covers the faces of its judges.

If not he, then who is it?

²⁵“Now my days are swifter than a runner.

They flee away. They see no good.

²⁶They have passed away as the swift ships,

as the eagle that swoops on the prey.

²⁷If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint,

I will put off my sad face, and cheer up,’

²⁸I am afraid of all my sorrows.

I know that you will not hold me innocent.

²⁹I will be condemned.

Why then do I labor in vain?

³⁰If I wash myself with snow,

and cleanse my hands with lye,

³¹yet you will plunge me in the ditch.

My own clothes will abhor me.

³²For ʜᴇ is not a human, as I am, that I should answer ʜɪᴍ,

that we should come together in court.

³³There is no mediator between us,

that might lay ʜɪꜱ hand on us both.

³⁴Let ʜɪᴍ take ʜɪꜱ rod away from me.

Let ʜɪꜱ terror not make me afraid;

³⁵then I would speak and not fear ʜɪꜱ,

for I am not so in myself.