Job 33

1 “All the same, Job, hear my words,

and give ear to my speech.

2 I have opened my mouth,

and my tongue has spoken.

3 My heart is clean in what I say,

and the understanding of my lips is clean in what it thinks.

4 A divine spirit made me,

and the breath of the Almighty teaches me.

5 If you can, answer me on this;

wait — take your stand against me, and I will stand against you.

6 You were shaped out of clay, and so was I;

we were shaped from the same stuff.

7 No fear of me will whirl you about,

and my hand will not lie heavy on you.

8 Only, you said it in my hearing —

I heard the sound of your words —

9 because you say, ‘I am clean, I have not sinned;

I am blameless, for I have done nothing lawless.

10 But he found a complaint against me

and has counted me as an adversary.

11 He has put my foot in the wooden block

and has watched every road I take.’

12 How can you say, ‘I am righteous, and he has not listened to me’?

For the one above mortals is eternal.

13 You say, ‘Why has he not listened to every word of my case?’

14 For the Lord speaks once,

and a second time in a dream,

15 or in a night thought,

as when a terrible fear falls on people

while they doze on their beds.

16 Then he uncovers the mind of people,

and with sights of terror like these he frightens them,

17 to turn a person away from wrongdoing;

and he rescued his body from the fall.

18 He spared his soul from death

and kept him from falling in war.

19 Again he corrects him with sickness on his bed,

and he has numbed the whole mass of his bones,

20 so that he cannot take any food at all,

though his soul craves a meal,

21 until his flesh rots away

and shows his bones bare.

22 His soul has come close to death,

and his life is in Hades.

23 If there are a thousand death-bearing messengers,

not one of them will wound him,

if he decides in his heart to turn back to the Lord,

and tells another person what he is blamed for,

and shows his own senselessness.

24 Then he will hold him up so that he does not fall into death;

he will make his body new like fresh plaster on a wall,

and he will fill his bones with marrow.

25 He will make his flesh soft as a baby’s

and set him back among people, a grown man again.

26 He will pray to the Lord, and it will be accepted;

he will go in with a clean face and speak out openly,

and he will render righteousness to people.

27 Then a man will find fault with himself and say,

‘What things I was doing! And he did not punish me as my sins deserved.

28 Save my soul from going down into ruin,

and my life will see the light.’

29 All these things the Strong One does,

three ways with a man.

30 ‘But he rescued my soul from death,

so that my life may praise him in the light.’

31 Give ear, Job, and listen to me;

be silent, and I will speak.

32 If you have arguments, answer me;

speak, for I want to see you shown righteous.

33 If not, then you listen to me;

be silent, and I will teach you wisdom.”