Bildad Speaks: Job Should Repent 8 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: 2  “How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind? 3  Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right? 4  If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. 5  If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, 6  if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation. 7  And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great. 8  “For inquire, please, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out. 9  For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow. 10  Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding? 11  “Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water? 12  While yet in flower and not cut down, they wither before any other plant. 13  Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish. 14  His confidence is severed, and his trust is a spider’s web. 15  He leans against his house, but it does not stand; he lays hold of it, but it does not endure. 16  He is a lush plant before the sun, and his shoots spread over his garden.

7 “Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand? 2  Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his wages, 3  so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. 4  When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn. 5  My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh. 6  My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to their end without hope. 7  “Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. 8  The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone. 9  As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up; 10  he returns no more to his house, nor does his place know him anymore. 11  “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12  Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me? 13  When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ 14  then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15  so that I would choose strangling and death rather tha

6 Then Job answered and said: 2  “Oh that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! 3  For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; therefore my words have been rash. 4  For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison;

5 “Call now; is there anyone who will answer you? To which of the holy ones will you turn? 2  Surely vexation kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple. 3  I have seen the fool taking root, but suddenly I cursed his dwelling. 4  His children are far from safety;

Eliphaz Speaks: The Innocent Prosper 4 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: 2  “If one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? Yet who can keep from speaking? 3  Behold, you have instructed many, and you have strengthened the weak hands. 4  Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. 5  But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed.

3 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job said: 3  “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ 4  Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. 5  Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it;

2 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” 3 And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.”

1 There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.