Job 12:4
The Voice
4 As for me—the one who called upon God and whom God answered—
now, I am pitiful, laughable, a just and upright joke.
Job 14:1-14
The Voice
14 Job: Humankind, born of woman,
has a few brief years with much suffering.
2 Like a short-lived bloom,
he springs up only to wither;
like the brief shade gained by a fast-moving cloud,
he passes swiftly.
3 Lord, is this why You turn Your gaze on such a creature:
to bring me,[a] a mere human being, alongside You for judgment?
4 Who can take what is impure and defiled
to fashion something pure and pristine?
No one! We are, after all, so different in nature.
5 Since a person’s life is fixed,
and You are the One who determines the number of his months,
And You set a limit on the length of her life,
and since they are incapable of exceeding Your decree,
6 The least You can do is turn Your gaze away from him until they pass,
so that he can enjoy his day like a hired worker.
7 You know, at least there is a kind of hope for a tree:
if it gets cut down, it may yet sprout again out of the roots.
And very likely then, its tender shoots will not die.
8 Its roots may age deep under the ground,
and the stump appear dead in the dry earth,
9 But even then it needs only the merest whiff of water
to bud again and put forth shoots like a newly planted sapling.
10 But not so with humankind.
The noblest of human beings dies and lies flat.
Humans die, and where do they go?
11 Just as water evaporates from the sea,
And riverbeds go parched and dry,
12 so humankind lies down and does not rise again.
Until the day when the skies are done away with,
humankind will neither awaken nor rouse from slumber.
13 O that You would merely hide me in the land of the dead
and keep me in secret till Your wrath is gone,
until a time You decide when You might think upon me.
14 If one dies, can he live again?
Through these days of toil and struggle,
I will patiently wait until my situation changes.
Footnotes
- 14:3 Other manuscripts read, “him.”
Job 17:11-16
The Voice
11 Even now my days have passed me by;
My plans lie broken at my feet;
the secret wishes of my heart grow cold.
12 And yet my friends say, this loss of hope is for good,
turning my dark night into what appears to them as day.
In the pitch darkness, these broken plans and secret wishes speak to me.
They say, “There is light nearby.”
13 If I hope only to live in the land of the dead,
if I prepare for myself a bed in the darkness,
14 If I speak to my burial pit, calling it “Father,”
and to the worms in the earth, calling them “Mother” and “Sister,”
15 Then where will I find my hope?
And who will see it?
16 Will hope go with me to the place of death?
Will hope accompany me into the ground?
Job 19:7
The Voice
7 Look! I cry out, “Violence!” but no response comes.
I shout for help, but justice eludes me.
Job 19:17-19
The Voice
17 My breath is strange; even my wife avoids me;
I’m loathsome to my relatives; they can’t stand to be around me.
18 Even young children taunt me,
and when I seek to rise, they mock me.
19 My closest friends can no longer bear me,
and anyone I have ever loved has turned against me.
Job 19:25-27
The Voice
25 Besides, I know my Redeemer lives,
and in the end He will rise and take His stand on the earth.
26 And though my skin has been stripped off,
still, in my flesh, I will see God.
27 I, myself, will see Him:
not some stranger, but actually me, with these eyes.
Toward this end, my deepest longings pine away within my chest.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
