When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.

“But this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know that this was in your mind:

You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me; your forces come against me wave upon wave.

“Yet if you devote your heart to him and stretch out your hands to him,

“At least there is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail.

Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash,

My days have passed, my plans are shattered. Yet the desires of my heart

I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.

God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me.

The one who was dying blessed me; I made the widow’s heart sing.

My glory will not fade; the bow will be ever new in my hand.’

if my steps have turned from the path, if my heart has been led by my eyes, or if my hands have been defiled,

“If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor’s door,

and their hearts did not bless me for warming them with the fleece from my sheep,

so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage,

if I have concealed my sin as people do, by hiding my guilt in my heart

inside I am like bottled-up wine, like new wineskins ready to burst.

My words come from an upright heart; my lips sincerely speak what I know.

“The godless in heart harbor resentment; even when he fetters them, they do not cry for help.

“At this my heart pounds and leaps from its place.

Therefore, people revere him, for does he not have regard for all the wise in heart?”