Beginning
24 Job: Why are there not judgment times for the wicked before the Highest One?[a]
Why do those who know Him not see His judgment days?
2 After all it’s the wicked who seize land that belongs to others,
capture flocks and let them graze for themselves,
3 Drive off orphans’ donkeys,
take as collateral widows’ oxen,
4 Drive the needy off the road,
and force the poor into hiding together.
5 Look at how the poor are forced to live!
Like wild donkeys in the desert,
They spend all their energy scrounging for food,
hoping the desert provides enough to feed their children!
6 They forage for scraps out in the open
and glean what they can from the already-harvested vineyards of the wicked.
7 They settle down night after night, naked since pawning their cloaks,
and have nothing to protect them from the cold.
8 The hard mountain rains soak them
as they press themselves against rocks in the absence of real shelter;
9 The fatherless child is torn away from the breast;
the suckling babe is seized as collateral from the poor.
10 They force the poor to wander naked, no clothing to be had,
carrying the very bundles of grain they long to eat.
11 They are stationed among the terraces[b]
pressing oil from the olive that calls to their hunger;
they trample in winepresses, extracting the juice for which they thirst.
12 At the outskirts of the city, the oppressed groan,
wounded souls crying for help,
but God fails to charge the guilty who have brought them such pain.
13 They were among those who rebel against the light.
They don’t want to know what makes it shine,
nor do they live their lives in its paths.
14 It is not the poor and the victim who rebel.
It is the murderer who rises before first light
And kills the poor and the needy.
And in the dark of night, he becomes the thief.
15 And the eye of the adulterer waits for the onset of dusk;
he thinks, “No one will see me,” because he disguises his face.
16 And others break into homes in the dark.
However, by day they shut themselves up inside
because they do not know the light.
17 For all of these criminals,
the morning arrives arm in arm with the threat of being found out.
It is as the shadow of death to them,
for they are at ease with the terrors of the night.
This passage is challenging to translate because it appears to have Job arguing against his previous convictions by claiming the wicked do suffer, which fits better with Zophar’s philosophy. But that textual difficulty offers two possible explanations of Job’s apparent dual arguments. First, it is possible to read these verses as if Job is quoting his friends; he is not adopting this theology, but mocking his friends who do. Second, Job may be cursing the wicked, wishing these evil things would happen to them. The Greek version of the text, called the Septuagint, provides the second translation of this passage. Regardless of who said it and how, this passage describes the possible pitfalls of evil actions.
18 Job: The wicked may sit lightly on the surface of the waters,
but their bit of land, the parcel on which they live, is accursed;
In fact, they don’t even turn down the road to their vineyards
because they don’t produce.
19 Just as summer’s heat and drought melt and carry off the winter snow,
the land of the dead digests and carries away sinners.
20 The very wombs whence they came forget them;
the worms will feast on them until no one remembers they existed;
the skeletons of wickedness dry up and snap like twigs.
21 They deliberately prey on women with no children to protect them
and don’t care to lend a hand to widows!
22 By His power, God drags off the high and mighty with the ropes of a hunter,
and though they may rise to the top, they have no assurance of true life.
23 God may provide for them, and they may feel secure,
but His eyes are always on their ways.
24 They may make their mark—to be sure—in a brief moment of glory,
but then just as quickly the wicked are gone, like the rest of humanity,
like heads of grain cut off and dried up.
25 Now, if this is not the truth, then call me a liar
and count all this talk for nothing.
25 Then Bildad the Shuhite responded.
2 Bildad: God rules over all things;
dread is His domain,
God—who makes peace and order on His own heights.
3 As for His armies, can they even be counted?
As for His light, is anyone not illuminated?
4 Then tell me how can a person be right with God?
How can someone born of a woman in blood be pure?
5 If even the moon is not bright enough
and the light of the stars is not pure in His estimation,
6 How much less so a human,
who is a mere worm—
The offspring of humanity,
who is a maggot!
26 Job explained.
2 Job (sarcastically): What a great help you are to the powerless!
How you have held up the arm that is feeble and weak!
Thanks to commonly known Greek and Roman mythologies, it is not difficult to imagine what “the land of the dead” or sheol may be. But what is this place of “destruction,” known in Hebrew as abaddon? The Hebrew word comes from a verb that means “to become lost,” and abaddon is usually mentioned in the Old Testament in conjunction with the land of the dead, the grave, or death itself—places lost to the living world. In the New Testament Book of Revelation, abaddon is personified as the “messenger of the abyss” (9:11) who rules the locusts—horrible creatures that torture any living thing. Based on these clues, abaddon may be thought of as a place for the dead (like here in Job) or as death personified (like in Revelation) that decimates everything around it or commands the destruction of everything it sees, a primitive creature living in its own chaos where no one would ever want to visit and wreaking havoc wherever it goes outside its home.
3 What sage counsel you have given to me, the unwise!
And what immeasurable insight you have put on display for us!
4 Whom did you say these words to?
Where did you get such profound inspiration?
5 The departed quiver below,
down deep beneath the seas
and all that is within them,
6 The land of the dead is exposed before God,
and the place where destruction lies is uncovered in His presence.
7 He stretches out the northern sky over vast reaches of emptiness;
He hangs the earth itself on nothing.
8 He binds up the waters into His clouds,
but the cloud does not burst from the strain.
9 He conceals the sight of His throne
and spreads His clouds over it to hide it from view.
10 He has encircled the waters with a horizon-boundary:
the line between day and night, light and darkness.
11 The very pillars that hold up the sky quake
and are astounded by His reprisals.
12 By His power, He stilled the sea, quelling the chaos;
by His wisdom, He pierced Rahab, evil of the sea;
13 By His breath, the heavens are made beautifully clear;
by His hand that ancient serpent—even as it attempted escape—is pierced through.
14 And all of this, all of these are the mere edges of His capabilities.
We are privy to only a whisper of His power.
Who then dares to claim understanding of His thunderous might?
27 Job continued.
2 Job: By God—who lives and has deprived me of justice,
the Highest One[c] who has also embittered my soul—
3 I make this proclamation:
that, while there is life in me,
While the breath of that selfsame God is in my nostrils,
4 My lips will not let lies escape them,
and my tongue will not form deceit.
5 So I will never concede that you three are right.
Until the day I die, I will not abandon my integrity just to appease you.
6 On the contrary, I’ll assert my innocence and never let it go;
my heart will not mock my past or my future.
7 May my enemy be counted as the wicked
and my adversary as the unjust.
8 For what hope does he who is sullied and impure have
once God lops him off from life and requires his soul?
9 Will God listen to his cry
when he is overtaken by distress?
10 Will he have made the Highest One his pleasure after the fact?
Will he have marked the seasons with his calls to God once it is too late?
11 Let me show you what I have learned of God’s power.
I assure you I will not cover over the true nature of the Highest One’s ways.
12 Look, you have all seen it—seen the same things I have seen here.
Why then all this vain nonsense?
13 Indeed, Zophar, listen closely, for what the wicked of humanity will inherit from God.
This is the heritage the Highest One bequeaths to those who oppress:
14 If the children of the wicked multiply,
they meet their end at the blade of the sword.
And even if they are fat with surplus,
the descendants of the wicked will be starved for bread.
15 Those who survive will fall to disease and be buried;
many of their widows will not mourn their deaths.
16 Though he pile up money as if it were common dirt
and clothing in heaps like mounds of clay,
17 What he may prepare, the righteous will wear;
the silver he sets aside, the innocent will divide.
18 He builds his house doomed to impermanence—
like the moth’s cocoon,
like the field watchman’s lean-to that is dismantled after the harvest.
19 He lies down to sleep a wealthy man,
but never again,
For when he opens his eyes to morning,
all is gone.
20 Terrors overtake him as if they were floodwaters;
the tempest snatches him away in the dead of night.
21 Indeed, the sultry east wind lifts him up and away.
He is gone, swept off the place he knew as his own.
22 It will have blown against him pitilessly,
and he tries to flee from its fast-closing hand.
23 As a final humiliation, it claps its hands against him as a man would—
sneering, hissing at him as he leaves.
28 Job: There is a place where silver is mined,
a place where gold is refined.
2 There iron is dug from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
3 Humans put an end to darkness,
and search in every last corner
For the ore that is in gloom and darkness.
4 In the earth they cut a shaft
in a place forgotten, far from the beaten path;
They descend on ropes,
swinging dangerously back and forth.
5 The ground above yields food;
the earth below is turned as if fire has destroyed it
6 Where earth gives up sapphires from her rocks
and bits of gold from her dirt.
7 No bird of prey knows this way, this secret path down below;
no falcon’s eye has ever peered into it.
8 No proud beast has ever reached this place;
no lordly lion has marched over it.
9 The miner breaks apart flinty stone,
uprooting the ancient mountains.
10 He carves tunnels through the rock,
revealing precious treasures.
11 He dams up[d] the underground streams until they cease seeping,
and he brings out into the light what was hidden there in the darkness.
12 But where is wisdom found,
and where does understanding dwell?
Proverbs 1:20–33 and 8:3–36 give the best articulated picture of wisdom in the Bible. Personified there as Lady Wisdom, this character was created by God long before His creation of the world—which she then aided in. After creation, she wanted nothing more than to be with humanity and help them to have full, truthful lives; but here Job explains that wisdom is now hidden. Certainly God knows where she is, although He isn’t telling; but humans have a better chance of finding immeasurable wealth than of attaining wisdom. This is because she is only found on one road, and that’s the God-fearing road of piety. In order to find wisdom, one must allow God to direct him there; and ironically, the knowledge that God must direct lives is wisdom itself!
13 Job: No human perceives wisdom’s true value,
nor has she been found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says, “She is not to be seen within me.”
“Nor within me,” says the voice of the raging sea.
15 No gold can be given in trade for wisdom,
nor a sum of silver weighed out as her price.
16 She cannot be bought with all the gold of Ophir,
neither with onyx nor sapphire.
17 The shimmer of gold and brightness of glass cannot compare,
and no refined gold jewelry is worth her in trade.
18 Perish the mention of coral and crystal;
even more than pearls is the value of wisdom.
19 Ethiopian topaz—unequal as well;
even gold, unalloyed, is too paltry indeed.
20 Then from where does wisdom come?
Where does understanding dwell?
21 She is hidden away from every eye,
even from birds looking down from the sky.
22 Destruction and Death have both confessed,
“Rumors are all we know about her.”
23 God understands wisdom’s path and way;
her place is known to Him alone.
24 For He gazes out to the edge of the earth,
sees all that falls beneath the sky overhead.
25 He lent the wind its weight and force
and measured out the waters’ spread.
26 When He set a limit on the rain that falls
and made the thunderbolt a road to race,
27 Then He saw wisdom and made her known,
He settled her and searched out for her a place.
28 And to humankind, He said, “Now, the fear of the Lord is wisdom,
and to depart from evil is understanding.”
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.