Job

No. 5 Job 39:17-30
The book of Job is a long argument about suffering. Job is a good man who loses his children, his wealth, and his health for no reason he can see. His friends insist he must have done something to deserve it....
No. 100 Job 33:1-16
Job's three friends have run out of arguments, and a younger man named Elihu, who has been listening the whole time, breaks in. He speaks for six chapters and nobody answers him. This passage is his opening,...
No. 110 Job 2:1-5
Job has already lost his children, his servants, and his livestock in a single day, and has responded by saying the LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. This passage is the second scene in the heavenly...
No. 202 Job 15:17-35
Eliphaz is Job's oldest friend and the first to speak. This is his second speech, and by now his patience has gone. This passage is his account of how the world works, delivered to a man sitting in ashes who...
No. 319 Job 21:17-34
Job is arguing with his friends, and the argument is about how the world actually works. His friends keep insisting on a tidy formula: the wicked suffer and the righteous prosper, so Job's suffering must mean...
No. 332 Job 38:1-16
For thirty-seven chapters Job has been demanding an explanation. He has lost his children, his health, and his wealth, and he wants God to come down and account for it, to give him a reason. In this passage...
No. 344 Job 14:17-22
This is Job at the very bottom, and it is one of the bleakest passages in the Bible. There is no resurrection hope in it, no silver lining, just a faithful man giving voice to despair as honestly as anyone...
No. 415 Job 35:1-16
Elihu is the youngest of Job's counselors, and his speeches are a mixed bag; he says some sharp and unfair things to a suffering man. But buried in this chapter is one observation so beautiful it has outlived...
No. 421 Job 4:1-16
Eliphaz is the first of Job's friends to speak, and much of what he goes on to say is wrong; the book will end with God rebuking these friends for how they spoke of him. But Eliphaz opens with an observation...
No. 517 Job 20:1-16
This is a speech by Zophar, one of Job's friends, and it comes with a warning label, because these friends are largely wrong about Job; they keep insisting his suffering must be punishment for hidden sin,...
No. 547 Job 28:17-28
This is a great poem in the middle of Job about wisdom, and it circles one question: where can wisdom be found? First it establishes wisdom's value by comparison. Gold and glass cannot equal it; it cannot be...
No. 557 Job 21:1-16
Job's friends have been insisting on a tidy theology: the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer, so Job's agony must be proof of hidden sin. Here Job answers them, and his answer is simply to point at...
No. 597 Job 1:6-11
The book of Job pulls back a curtain and shows us a scene in heaven that Job himself never sees. The heavenly beings present themselves before God, and Satan is among them, and God does something startling: he...
No. 607 Job 34:33-37
Elihu, the young man who has appointed himself to set Job straight, is in full flow here, and he says something that should stop us. Having decided that Job speaks without knowledge and that his words lack...
No. 639 Job 12:17-25
In the middle of his suffering, Job pauses to describe the sheer scope of God's sovereignty, and the picture he paints is of a God utterly unimpressed by human power and wisdom. He leads counselors away...
No. 665 Job 29:1-16
After his friends have run out of arguments, Job begins his last long speech, and he opens it looking backward. He remembers the months of old, when God watched over him, when the friendship of God was in his...
No. 668 Job 1:17-22
The book of Job opens by telling us what Job does not know. In the heavenly court, God has allowed a test: everything Job has may be struck, to see whether he serves God for nothing. So the blows fall, and the...
No. 741 Job 37:17-24
Elihu is the last of Job's friends to speak, and just before God himself answers out of the storm, Elihu points up at the sky. Can you spread out the heavens with him, he asks, hard and bright as a mirror of...
No. 742 Job 14:1-16
This is one of Job's darkest and most beautiful speeches, a meditation on how frail a human life is. Man born of woman, he says, is of few days and full of trouble; he comes up like a flower and is cut down,...
No. 780 Job 25:1-6
Bildad's last speech is the shortest in the book, just a handful of verses, and you can feel the friends running out of things to say. He begins with something true and even grand about God: dominion and awe...
No. 880 Job 10:17-22
We are deep in Job's suffering, in one of his speeches to God. Stripped of children, health, and standing, he has stopped being polite. Here he tells God he feels hunted, fresh witnesses renewed against him,...
No. 907 Job 20:17-29
This is Zophar, one of Job's three friends, in full flow. He is describing, with grim relish, the fate of the wicked man: he will not enjoy the streams of honey he stole, he will vomit up the riches he...
No. 1004 Job 40:1-5
After chapters of Job demanding an answer from God, God has finally spoken out of the whirlwind, not explaining Job's suffering but overwhelming him with questions about the vastness of creation. Now God...
No. 1018 Job 24:17-25
Job is still arguing against his friends' neat theology. They insist the wicked always get punished promptly in this life; Job keeps pointing at the world as it actually is. In these verses he describes the...
No. 1238 Job 28:1-16
In the middle of Job, a magnificent poem meditates on wisdom. It begins by marveling at human ingenuity in mining: men sink shafts far from human dwellings, hang and swing in the dark, cut channels through...
No. 1350 Job 42:12-17
The book of Job ends in restoration. The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning, giving him twice the livestock he had lost, fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke...
No. 1352 Job 26:1-14
Job answers his friends with heavy irony, then lifts his eyes to the greatness of God in creation. Sheol lies naked before God; he stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing; he...
No. 1417 Job 32:6-22
A new voice enters the book of Job. Elihu, a young man who has held his tongue while his elders spoke, can no longer keep silent. I am young, he says, and you are old, so I held back and did not dare declare...
No. 1518 Job 34:1-16
Elihu continues his speeches, taking up the defense of God's justice against Job's complaint that God has denied him his right. Far be it from God to do wickedness, Elihu says, and from the Almighty to do...
No. 1568 Job 13:1-16
Job answers his friends sharply. What you know, I know too; I am not inferior to you. But you are worthless physicians, patching me with lies; I wish you would be silent, and that would be your wisdom. And...
No. 1600 Job 8:17-22
Bildad, one of Job's friends, is arguing that God deals with people strictly according to their conduct: the wicked wither like a plant torn up by the roots, while the blameless are upheld. He ends his speech...
No. 1642 Job 17:1-16
Job has sunk to the depths of despair. My spirit is broken, he says, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me. He is surrounded by mockers, made a byword among the people, spat upon; his eye grows...
No. 1667 Job 31:33-40
Job comes to the end of his long defense. Have I, like Adam, covered my transgressions, he asks, hiding my iniquity in my heart because I feared the crowd and dreaded the contempt of families, so that I kept...
No. 1669 Job 11:1-20
Zophar, the third of Job's friends, breaks in, and he spares Job nothing. He rebukes Job for his flood of words and his claim to be pure, and wishes God would speak and expose him, for, Zophar says, God exacts...
No. 1717 Job 31:1-16
As Job defends his integrity, he opens with a striking statement about his eyes. I made a covenant with my eyes, he says; how then should I look with lust at a young woman? He goes on to protest that he has...
No. 1722 Job 30:17-31
Job's lament reaches a bleak depth. His bones are pierced in the night, the gnawing pains give no rest; he has been cast into the mire, become like dust and ashes. And most bitterly, he feels that God has...
No. 1733 Job 36:1-16
Elihu, the young man who speaks after Job's three friends, continues his defense of God's ways. God is great, he says, and does not despise anyone; he gives justice to the afflicted and does not turn his eyes...
No. 1794 Job 24:1-16
Job voices a hard complaint about the world he sees. Why, he asks, does God not set times of reckoning, so that those who know him might see justice done? For the wicked go on unchecked: they move boundary...
No. 1827 Job 38:17-32
Out of the whirlwind, God answers Job's demand for explanations, not with answers, but with questions. Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Do you know where light dwells, or darkness? Have you...
No. 1858 Job 6:17-30
Job likens his friends to a seasonal stream that fails just when it is needed. In the wet season the brook runs, but in the dry heat it vanishes, consumed out of its place; and the caravans that turn aside to...
No. 1889 Job 15:1-16
Eliphaz answers Job a second time, and more harshly. He accuses Job of empty, crafty talk that undermines devotion to God, and then turns to condescension: are you the first man ever born? Have you heard God's...
No. 1981 Job 27:17-23
Job describes the insecurity of the wicked man's prosperity. He may heap up wealth, but the just will wear it and the innocent divide his silver; the house he builds is as flimsy as a moth's cocoon. He lies...
No. 2084 Job 39:1-16
God continues to answer Job out of the whirlwind, not with explanations of his suffering but with questions about the created world, especially the wild creatures beyond human reach. Do you know when the...
No. 2241 Job 13:17-28
In the depth of his suffering, Job speaks boldly to God, longing to argue his case and to understand. But amid his bold words comes a cry of anguish that reveals his deepest pain. It is not only the loss and...
No. 2350 Job 31:17-32
Job is near the end of his defense, laying out under oath the life he has led. He walks through the private ledger of his conduct: he shared his bread with the fatherless, clothed the perishing, never lifted a...
No. 2359 Job 5:1-16
These words come from Eliphaz, one of Job's friends, and Scripture will later say the friends did not speak rightly of God, so his counsel has to be weighed, not simply swallowed. Yet within it sits an...
No. 2435 Job 38:33-41
God is answering Job out of the whirlwind, not with explanations but with questions that dwarf him. Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you send the lightning on its way? Can you hunt prey for the lioness...
No. 2455 Job 42:7-11
After all the speeches, God turns to Job's three friends with anger: you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. He tells them to bring offerings and have Job pray for them, for he will...
No. 2533 Job 34:17-32
Elihu is describing the justice of God, and one thread is worth lifting out. God shows no partiality to princes, he says, and regards the rich no more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands. His...
No. 2554 Job 18:1-16
Bildad, one of Job's friends, answers his suffering with a long, grim catalog. The light of the wicked is put out, he says; the lamp above him goes dark; he is caught by his own feet in a net, snared by the...
No. 2721 Job 41:1-16
God is still answering Job out of the whirlwind, and here he turns to Leviathan, the great creature of the sea. Can you draw him out with a hook? Put a rope in his nose, tame him, leash him for your daughters...
No. 2819 Job 8:1-16
Bildad, the second of Job's friends, answers with cold, tidy orthodoxy. Does God pervert justice? he asks. If your children sinned, they got what their sin deserved. If you were truly pure, God would already...
No. 2822 Job 6:1-16
Job answers his friends out of raw pain. Oh, that my anguish could be weighed, he says; it would be heavier than the sand of the sea. The arrows of the Almighty are in me, and my spirit drinks their poison. He...
No. 2838 Job 23:1-17
Job is still in agony, and his longing takes a striking shape: if only I knew where to find him, he says, I would come to his seat, lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. He is convinced God...
No. 2997 Job 19:1-16
Job answers his friends' relentless assault: how long will you torment me and crush me with words? Ten times over you have reproached me. And he feels that God himself has turned against him, walled up his...
No. 3008 Job 1:12-16
God permits Satan to strike everything Job has, but sets a firm boundary: only do not lay a hand on Job himself. And then, on a single day, disaster after disaster falls. A messenger arrives: the Sabeans have...
No. 3206 Job 12:1-16
Job answers his friends' condescension with a touch of sarcasm: no doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. But I have understanding too; I am not inferior to you. Then he lifts his eyes past...
No. 3293 Job 18:17-21
Bildad paints a grim portrait of the fate of the wicked: his memory perishes from the earth, he has no name in the street, he is driven from light into darkness and chased out of the world, leaving no son and...
No. 3346 Job 5:17-27
Eliphaz says something true, even though he wrongly assumes Job's suffering proves guilt: happy is the one whom God corrects; do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he binds up; he...
No. 3408 Job 22:1-16
Eliphaz, unable to accept that a righteous man could suffer, invents sins to explain Job's misery. He accuses Job of stripping the poor of their clothing, withholding bread from the hungry, sending widows away...
No. 3412 Job 40:6-24
God answers Job's demands for a reckoning not with explanations but with questions that put Job in his place: will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, or can you thunder with...
No. 3426 Job 7:17-21
Job takes the words of a psalm of praise and turns them inside out. Where Psalm 8 marvels that God is mindful of man, Job, in his pain, cries: what is man that you make so much of him, that you test him every...
No. 3451 Job 9:17-35
Job voices a deep anguish and, buried within it, a deep longing. He feels God has overwhelmed him, and despairs of ever pleading his case: how can a mere man answer God, who is not a man like me that we could...
No. 3510 Job 16:1-16
Worn down by his friends' accusations, Job cries out: I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all. They came to comfort him but only wounded him more, piling words onto his agony. And Job...
No. 3560 Job 37:1-16
Elihu points Job to the sheer majesty of God displayed in the storm. God thunders wondrously with his voice; he commands the snow to fall and the rain to pour; he does great things that we cannot comprehend....
No. 3570 Job 32:1-5
A new voice enters the book of Job: Elihu, a younger man who had held his tongue out of respect while his elders spoke. Now his anger is kindled, and it burns in two directions. He is angry at Job for...
No. 3636 Job 30:1-16
Job's lament reaches a low point. Once honored, he is now mocked even by the youngest and lowest, people he would not have trusted with his sheepdogs, who now spit at the sight of him and make him their...
No. 3654 Job 33:17-33
Elihu describes the many ways God works to save a person from destruction. He speaks through dreams in the night, and through suffering on a sickbed, all to turn a person back from pride and from the pit. God...
No. 3758 Job 36:17-33
Elihu lifts Job's eyes from his suffering to the greatness of God, especially as seen in the natural world. Behold, God is exalted in his power; who is a teacher like him? He describes God drawing up the drops...
No. 3801 Job 4:17-21
In the middle of his speech, Job's friend Eliphaz voices a truth that stands on its own, whatever the flaws in how he applies it to Job: can mortal man be more righteous than God, or a man be purer than his...
No. 3818 Job 22:17-30
Though Job's friend Eliphaz wrongly assumes Job's suffering proves secret sin, his appeal contains counsel that rings true on its own: agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you. He urges...
No. 3830 Job 10:1-16
Job, in the depth of his suffering, does not fall silent or turn away from God; he turns toward him and pours out his anguish with raw honesty: I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I...
No. 3848 Job 27:1-16
Under relentless pressure from friends who insist his suffering proves secret sin, Job refuses to concede a guilt he does not have. Far be it from me to say you are right, he tells them; till I die I will not...
No. 3849 Job 16:17-22
In the midst of his suffering, misunderstood and mocked by the very friends who should have comforted him, Job reaches for a profound hope: even now, behold, my witness is in heaven; he who vouches for me is...
No. 3884 Job 3:17-26
Job, crushed by suffering, gives voice to a longing that those in deep pain sometimes feel: a longing for the rest of the grave. There, he says, the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest;...
No. 3958 Job 19:17-29
Job has reached the depths. His breath is repulsive to his wife, his familiar friends abhor him, even children despise him; he is abandoned by everyone and wasting away, barely escaping with the skin of his...
No. 3967 Job 29:17-25
In his suffering, Job remembers the days of his former honor and dignity, when he was respected by all, and describes how he used that standing. He broke the fangs of the unrighteous and rescued the prey from...
No. 3984 Job 1:1-5
Before the storms of suffering break over Job, we are shown the man he was: blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil, blessed with a large family and great wealth. But one detail...
No. 4045 Job 3:1-16
Broken by suffering, Job breaks his long silence, and his first words are a bitter lament: he curses the day of his birth, wishing he had never been born, longing for the quiet of the grave. Let the day perish...
No. 4154 Job 2:6-13
When Job is struck with painful sores and reduced to sitting in ashes, his three friends hear of his suffering and come to be with him. And their first response, before they open their mouths to speak, is...
No. 4234 Job 9:1-16
In his suffering, Job wrestles with a question that reaches to the heart of the human condition: how can a man be righteous before God? He is overwhelmed by God's greatness and his own smallness; he feels he...
No. 4236 Job 7:1-16
Deep in his suffering, Job pours out his anguish with raw honesty. His life feels like hard, unrelenting labor; his nights are wearisome, his days swifter than a weaver's shuttle and spent without hope....
No. 4275 Job 41:17-34
In answering Job, God describes Leviathan, a fearsome creature no human can tame or subdue. Weapons cannot pierce it; it counts iron as straw and laughs at the rush of the javelin; on earth there is nothing...
No. 4282 Job 42:1-6
After all his questions and complaints, and after God has spoken, Job's final words are not an argument but a surrender. I know that you can do all things, he says, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted. And...