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Then Job answered,

“Truly I know that it is so,
    but how can man be just with God?
If he is pleased to contend with him,
    he can’t answer him one time in a thousand.
God is wise in heart, and mighty in strength.
    Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?
He removes the mountains, and they don’t know it,
    when he overturns them in his anger.
He shakes the earth out of its place.
    Its pillars tremble.
He commands the sun and it doesn’t rise,
    and seals up the stars.
He alone stretches out the heavens,
    and treads on the waves of the sea.
He makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades,
    and the rooms of the south.
10 He does great things past finding out;
    yes, marvelous things without number.
11 Behold, he goes by me, and I don’t see him.
    He passes on also, but I don’t perceive him.
12 Behold, he snatches away.
    Who can hinder him?
    Who will ask him, ‘What are you doing?’

13 “God will not withdraw his anger.
    The helpers of Rahab stoop under him.

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Job’s Third Speech: A Response to Bildad

Then Job spoke again:

“Yes, I know all this is true in principle.
    But how can a person be declared innocent in God’s sight?
If someone wanted to take God to court,[a]
    would it be possible to answer him even once in a thousand times?
For God is so wise and so mighty.
    Who has ever challenged him successfully?

“Without warning, he moves the mountains,
    overturning them in his anger.
He shakes the earth from its place,
    and its foundations tremble.
If he commands it, the sun won’t rise
    and the stars won’t shine.
He alone has spread out the heavens
    and marches on the waves of the sea.
He made all the stars—the Bear and Orion,
    the Pleiades and the constellations of the southern sky.
10 He does great things too marvelous to understand.
    He performs countless miracles.

11 “Yet when he comes near, I cannot see him.
    When he moves by, I do not see him go.
12 If he snatches someone in death, who can stop him?
    Who dares to ask, ‘What are you doing?’
13 And God does not restrain his anger.
    Even the monsters of the sea[b] are crushed beneath his feet.

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Footnotes

  1. 9:3 Or If God wanted to take someone to court.
  2. 9:13 Hebrew the helpers of Rahab, the name of a mythical sea monster that represents chaos in ancient literature.