suffers with a clear conscience (27:6). He is willing to acknowledge any hidden faults, if only the Lord would reveal them to him (13:23). Nevertheless, to his great frustration, the heavens remain silent to his pleas, and his friends can do little more than repeat their calls for repentance, despite his efforts to expose the flaws in their conventional thinking. Finally, reaching the end of his rope, Job invokes the Lord by swearing an oath of innocence (27:1–6) and uttering a litany of conditional