9:1 Then Job answered,
9:2 “Truly I know that it is so, but how can man be just with God?
9:3 If he is pleased to contend with him, he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.
9:4 God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened himself against him, and prospered?
9:5 He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it, when he overturns them in his anger.
9:6 He shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
9:7 He commands the sun, and it doesn’t rise, and seals up the stars.
9:8 He alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
9:9 He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the rooms of the south.
9:10 He does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
9:11 Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him. He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
9:12 Behold, he snatches away. Who can hinder him? Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
9:13 “God will not withdraw his anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.
9:14 How much less shall I answer him, And choose my words to argue with him?
9:15 Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn’t answer him. I would make supplication to my judge.
9:16 If I had called, and he had answered me, yet I wouldn’t believe that he listened to my voice.
9:17 For he breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
9:18 He will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
9:19 If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, ‘Who,’ says he, ‘will summon me?’
9:20 Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.
9:21 I am blameless. I don’t respect myself. I despise my life.
9:22 “It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.
9:23 If the scourge kills suddenly, he will mock at the trial of the innocent.
9:24 The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If not he, then who is it?
9:25 “Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
9:26 They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
9:27 If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;’
9:28 I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.
9:29 I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
9:30 If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
9:31 yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
9:32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, that we should come together in judgment.
9:33 There is no umpire between us, that might lay his hand on us both.
9:34 Let him take his rod away from me. Let his terror not make me afraid;
9:35 then I would speak, and not fear him, for I am not so in myself.