Job 4

The First Dialogue

4Job, will you be annoyed if I speak?

I can’t keep quiet any longer.

³You have taught many people

and given strength to feeble hands.

⁴When someone stumbled, weak and tired,

your words encouraged him to stand.

⁵Now it’s your turn to be in trouble,

and you are too stunned to face it.

⁶You worshipped God, and your life was blameless;

and so you should have confidence and hope.

⁷Think back now. Name a single case

where a righteous person met with disaster.

⁸I have seen people plough fields of evil

and sow wickedness like seed;

now they harvest wickedness and evil.

⁹Like a storm, God destroys them in his anger.

¹⁰The wicked roar and growl like lions,

but God silences them and breaks their teeth.

¹¹Like lions with nothing to kill and eat,

they die, and all their children are scattered.

¹²Once a message came quietly,

so quietly I could hardly hear it.

^13*Like a nightmare it disturbed my sleep.

¹⁴I trembled and shuddered;

my whole body shook with fear.

¹⁵A light breeze touched my face,

and my hair bristled with fright.

¹⁶I could see something standing there;

I stared, but couldn’t tell what it was.

Then I heard a voice out of the silence:

¹⁷“Can anyone be righteous in the sight of^g God

or be pure before^h his Creator?

¹⁸God does not trust his heavenly servants;

he finds fault even with his angels.

¹⁹Do you think he will trust a creature of clay,

a thing of dust that can be crushed like a moth?

²⁰Someone may be alive in the morning,

but die unnoticed before evening comes.

²¹All that he has is taken away;

he dies, still lacking wisdom.”