When these celebrations ended—sometimes after several days—Job would purify his children. He would get up early in the morning and offer a burnt offering for each of them. For Job said to himself, “Perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.

Suddenly, a powerful wind swept in from the wilderness and hit the house on all sides. The house collapsed, and all your children are dead. I am the only one who escaped to tell you.”

Their children are abandoned far from help; they are crushed in court with no one to defend them.

You will have many children; your descendants will be as plentiful as grass!

Your children must have sinned against him, so their punishment was well deserved.

They never know if their children grow up in honor or sink to insignificance.

They betray their friends for their own advantage, so let their children faint with hunger.

They will have neither children nor grandchildren, nor any survivor in the place where they lived.

Even young children despise me. When I stand to speak, they turn their backs on me.

Their children will beg from the poor, for they must give back their stolen riches.

They live to see their children grow up and settle down, and they enjoy their grandchildren.

They let their children frisk about like lambs. Their little ones skip and dance.

“‘Well,’ you say, ‘at least God will punish their children!’ But I say he should punish the ones who sin, so that they understand his judgment.

Like wild donkeys in the wilderness, the poor must spend all their time looking for food, searching even in the desert for food for their children.

They may have many children, but the children will die in war or starve to death.

The Almighty was still with me, and my children were around me.

Job lived 140 years after that, living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren.