So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.

But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”

And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life.”

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Job’s Three Friends

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, each one came from his own place—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. For they had made an appointment together to come and mourn with him, and to comfort him.

And when they raised their eyes from afar, and did not recognize him, they lifted their voices and wept; and each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven.

So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

And Job spoke, and said:

“May the day perish on which I was born, And the night in which it was said, ‘A male child is conceived.’

May that day be darkness; May God above not seek it, Nor the light shine upon it.

May darkness and the shadow of death claim it; May a cloud settle on it; May the blackness of the day terrify it.

As for that night, may darkness seize it; May it not rejoice among the days of the year, May it not come into the number of the months.

Oh, may that night be barren! May no joyful shout come into it!

May the stars of its morning be dark; May it look for light, but have none, And not see the dawning of the day;

Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, Nor hide sorrow from my eyes.

Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?

For now I would have lain still and been quiet, I would have been asleep; Then I would have been at rest

Or with princes who had gold, Who filled their houses with silver;

Or why was I not hidden like a stillborn child, Like infants who never saw light?

The small and great are there, And the servant is free from his master.

“Why is light given to him who is in misery, And life to the bitter of soul,

Who long for death, but it does not come, And search for it more than hidden treasures;