The Daily Audio Bible
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23 Then Iyov answered:
2 “Today too my complaint is bitter;
my hand is weighed down because of my groaning.
3 I wish I knew where I could find him;
then I would go to where he is.
4 I would state my case before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.
5 I would know his answering words
and grasp what he would tell me.
6 Would he browbeat me with his great power?
No, he would pay attention to me.
7 There an upright person could reason with him;
thus I might be forever acquitted by my judge.
8 “If I head east, he isn’t there;
if I head west, I don’t detect him,
9 if I turn north, I don’t spot him;
in the south he is veiled, and I still don’t see him.
10 Yet he knows the way I take;
when he has tested me, I will come out like gold.
11 My feet have stayed in his footsteps;
I keep to his way without turning aside.
12 I don’t withdraw from his lips’ command;
I treasure his words more than my daily food.
13 “But he has no equal, so who can change him?
What he desires, he does.
14 He will accomplish what is decreed for me,
and he has many plans like this.
15 This is why I am terrified of him;
the more I think about it, the more afraid I am —
16 God has undermined my courage;
Shaddai frightens me.
17 Yet I am not cut off by the darkness;
he has protected me from the deepest gloom.
24 “Why are times not kept by Shaddai?
Why do those who know him not see his days?
2 There are those who move boundary markers;
they carry off flocks and pasture them;
3 they drive away the orphan’s donkey;
as collateral, they seize the widow’s ox.
4 They push the needy out of the way —
the poor of the land are forced into hiding;
5 like wild donkeys in the wilderness,
they have to go out and scavenge food,
[hoping that] the desert
will provide food for their children.
6 They must reap in fields that are not their own
and gather late grapes in the vineyards of the wicked.
7 They pass the night without clothing, naked,
uncovered in the cold,
8 wet with mountain rain,
and hugging the rock for lack of shelter.
9 “There are those who pluck orphans from the breast
and [those who] take [the clothes of] the poor in pledge,
10 so that they go about stripped, unclothed;
they go hungry, as they carry sheaves [of grain];
11 between these men’s rows [of olives], they make oil;
treading their winepresses, they suffer thirst.
12 Men are groaning in the city,
the mortally wounded are crying for help,
yet God finds nothing amiss!
13 “There are those who rebel against the light —
they don’t know its ways or stay in its paths.
14 The murderer rises with the light
to kill the poor and needy;
while at night he is like a thief.
15 The eye of the adulterer too waits for twilight;
he thinks, ‘No eye will see me’;
but [to be sure], he covers his face.
16 When it’s dark, they break into houses;
in the daytime, they stay out of sight.
[None of them] know the light.
17 For to all of them deep darkness is like morning,
for the terrors of deep darkness are familiar to them.
18 “May they be scum on the surface of the water,
may their share of land be cursed,
may no one turn on the way of their vineyards,
19 may drought and heat steal away their snow water
and Sh’ol those who have sinned.
20 May the womb forget them,
may worms find them sweet,
may they no longer be remembered —
thus may iniquity be snapped like a stick.
21 They devour childless women
and give no help to widows.
22 “Yet God keeps pulling the mighty along —
they get up, even when not trusting their own lives.
23 However, even if God lets them rest in safety,
his eyes are on their ways.
24 They are exalted for a little while;
and then they are gone,
brought low, gathered in like all others,
shriveled up like ears of grain.
25 “And even if it isn’t so now,
still no one can prove me a liar
and show that my words are worthless.”
25 Bildad the Shuchi said,
2 “Dominion and fear belong to him;
he makes peace in his high places.
3 Can his armies be numbered?
On whom does his light not shine?
4 How then can humans be righteous with God?
How can those born of women be clean?
5 Why, before him even the moon lacks brightness,
and the stars themselves are not pure.
6 How much less a human, who is merely a maggot,
a mortal, who is only a worm?!”
26 Then Iyov replied,
2 “What great help you bring to the powerless!
what deliverance to the arm without strength!
3 Such wonderful advice for a man lacking wisdom!
So much common sense you’ve expressed!
4 Who helped you to say these words?
Whose spirit is it, coming forth from you?
5 “The ghosts of the dead tremble
beneath the water, with its creatures.
6 Sh’ol is naked before him;
Abaddon lies uncovered.
7 He stretches the north over chaos
and suspends the earth on nothing.
8 He binds up the water in his thick clouds,
yet no cloud is torn apart by it.
9 He shuts off the view of his throne
by spreading his cloud across it.
10 He fixed a circle on the surface of the water,
defining the boundary between light and dark.
11 The pillars of heaven tremble,
aghast at his rebuke.
12 He stirs up the sea with his power,
and by his skill he strikes down Rahav.
13 With his Spirit he spreads the heavens;
his hand pierces the fleeing serpent.
14 And these are but the fringes of his ways;
how faint the echo we hear of him!
But who is able to grasp the meaning
of his thundering power?”
27 Iyov continued his speech:
2 “I swear by the living God,
who is denying me justice,
and by Shaddai,
who deals with me so bitterly,
3 that as long my life remains in me
and God’s breath is in my nostrils,
4 my lips will not speak unrighteousness,
or my tongue utter deceit.
5 Far be it from me to say you are right;
I will keep my integrity till the day I die.
6 I hold to my righteousness; I won’t let it go;
my heart will not shame me as long as I live.
7 “May my enemy meet the doom of the wicked;
my foe the fate of the unrighteous.
8 For what hope does the godless have from his gain
when God takes away his life?
9 Will God hear his cry
when trouble comes upon him?
10 Will he take delight in Shaddai
and always call on God?
11 “I am teaching you how God uses his power,
not hiding what Shaddai is doing.
12 Look, you all can see for yourselves;
so why are you talking such empty nonsense?
13 “This is God’s reward for the wicked man,
the heritage oppressors receive from Shaddai:
14 if his sons become many, they go to the sword;
and his children never have enough to eat.
15 Those of his who remain are buried by plague,
and their widows do not weep.
16 Even if he piles up silver like dust
and stores away clothing [in mounds] like clay —
17 he may collect it, but the just will wear it,
and the upright divide up the silver.
18 He builds his house weak as a spider’s web,
as flimsy as a watchman’s shack.
19 He may lie down rich, but his wealth yields nothing;
when he opens his eyes, it isn’t there.
20 Terrors overtake him like a flood;
at night a whirlwind steals him away.
21 The east wind carries him off, and he’s gone;
it sweeps him far from his place.
22 Yes, it hurls itself at him, sparing nothing;
he does all he can to flee from its power.
23 [People] clap their hands at him in derision
and hiss him out of his home.
12 For we take pride in this: that our conscience assures us that in our dealings with the world, and especially with you, we have conducted ourselves with frankness and godly pureness of motive — not by worldly wisdom but by God-given grace. 13 There are no hidden meanings in our letters other than what you can read and understand; and my hope is that you will understand fully, 14 as indeed you have already understood us in part; so that on the Day of our Lord Yeshua you can be as proud of us as we are of you.
15 So sure was I of this that I had planned to come and see you, so that you might have the benefit of a second visit. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, visit you again on my way back from Macedonia, and then have you send me on my way to Y’hudah.
17 Did I make these plans lightly? Or do I make plans the way a worldly man does, ready to say, “Yes, yes,” and “No, no,” in the same breath? 18 As surely as God is trustworthy, we don’t say “Yes” when we mean “No.” 19 For the Son of God, the Messiah Yeshua, who was proclaimed among you through us — that is, through me and Sila and Timothy — was not a yes-and-no man; on the contrary, with him it is always “Yes!” 20 For however many promises God has made, they all find their “Yes” in connection with him; that is why it is through him that we say the “Amen” when we give glory to God. 21 Moreover, it is God who sets both us and you in firm union with the Messiah; he has anointed us, 22 put his seal on us, and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee for the future.
23 I call God to witness — he knows what my life is like — that the reason I held back from coming to Corinth was out of consideration for you! 24 We are not trying to dictate how you must live out your trust in the Messiah, for in your trust you are standing firm. Rather, we are working with you for your own happiness.
2 So I made up my mind that I would not pay you another painful visit. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is left to make me happy except the people I have pained? 3 Indeed, this is why I wrote as I did — so that when I came, I would not have to be pained by those who ought to be making me happy; for I had enough confidence in all of you to believe that unless I could be happy, none of you could be happy either. 4 I wrote to you with a greatly distressed and anguished heart, and with many tears, not in order to cause you pain, but to get you to realize how very much I love you.
5 Now if someone has been a cause of pain, it is not I whom he has pained, but, in some measure — I don’t want to overstate it — all of you. 6 For such a person the punishment already imposed on him by the majority is sufficient, 7 so that now you should do the opposite — forgive him, encourage him, comfort him. Otherwise such a person might be swallowed up in overwhelming depression. 8 So I urge you to show that you really do love him. 9 The reason I wrote you was to see if you would pass the test, to see if you would fully obey me. 10 Anyone you forgive, I forgive too. For indeed, whatever I have forgiven, if there has been anything to forgive, has been for your sake in the presence of the Messiah 11 so that we will not be taken advantage of by the Adversary — for we are quite aware of his schemes!
41 (0) For the leader. A psalm of David:
2 (1) How blessed are those who care for the poor!
When calamity comes, Adonai will save them.
3 (2) Adonai will preserve them, keep them alive,
and make them happy in the land.
You will not hand them over
to the whims of their enemies.
4 (3) Adonai sustains them on their sickbed;
when they lie ill, you make them recover.
5 (4) I said, “Adonai, have pity on me!
Heal me, for I have sinned against you!”
6 (5) My enemies say the worst about me:
“When will he die and his name disappear?”
7 (6) When they come to see me they speak insincerely,
their hearts meanwhile gathering falsehoods;
then they go out and spread bad reports.
8 (7) All who hate me whisper together against me,
imagining the worst about me.
9 (8) “A fatal disease has attached itself to him;
now that he lies ill, he will never get up.”
10 (9) Even my close friend, on whom I relied,
who shared my table, has turned against me.
11 (10) But you, Adonai, have pity on me,
put me on my feet, so I can pay them back.
12 (11) I will know you are pleased with me
if my enemy doesn’t defeat me.
13 (12) You uphold me because of my innocence
you establish me in your presence forever.
14 (13) Blessed be Adonai the God of Isra’el
from eternity past to eternity future.
Amen. Amen.
5 Thorns and snares beset the way of the stubborn;
he who values his life keeps his distance from them.
6 Train a child in the way he [should] go;
and, even when old, he will not swerve from it.
Copyright © 1998 by David H. Stern. All rights reserved.