The Reading
Job 18
Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said,
"How long will you hunt for words?
Consider, and afterward we shall speak.
Why are we considered as animals?
Why are we taken as stupid in your eyes?
"You who are tearing yourself in your anger,
will the earth be forsaken because of you?
Or will the rock be removed from its place?
Furthermore, the light of the wicked is put out,
and the flame of his fire will not shine.
The light becomes dark in his tent,
and his lamp above him is put out.
"His strong steps are shortened,
and his own schemes throw him down,
for he is thrust into a net by his feet,
and he walks into a pitfall.
A trap seizes him by the heel;
a snare takes hold of him.
His rope is hidden in the ground,
and his trap on the path.
"Sudden terrors terrify him all around,
and they chase him at his heels.
His wealth will become hunger,
and disaster is ready for his stumbling.
It consumes parts of his skin;
the firstborn of death consumes his limbs.
He is torn from his tent in which he trusted,
and it brought him to the king of terrors.
"Nothing remains for him in his tent;
sulfur is scattered upon his dwelling place.
His roots dry up below,
and its branches wither away above.
His remembrance perishes from the earth,
and there is not a name for him on the street.
"They thrust him from light into darkness,
and they drive him out from the world.
There is no offspring for him nor a descendant among his people,
and there is not a survivor in his abode.
Those of the west are appalled over his fate,
and those of the east are seized with horror.
Surely these are the dwellings of the godless,
and this is the dwelling place of him who knows not God."
Job 19
Then Job answered and said,
"How long will you torment me
and crush me with words?
These ten times you have disgraced me;
you are not ashamed that you have attacked me.
And what is more, if I have truly erred,
my error remains with me.
If indeed you must magnify yourselves against me,
and you must let my disgrace argue against me,
know then that God has wronged me
and has surrounded me with his net.
"Look, I cry out, 'Violence!' but I am not answered;
I cry out, but there is no justice.
He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass;
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
He has taken my glory from me,
and he has removed the crown of my head.
He has broken me down all around, and I am gone.
And he has uprooted my hope like a tree,
and he has kindled his wrath against me,
and he has counted me as one of his foes.
His troops have come together
and have thrown up their rampart against me
and have encamped around my tent.
"He has removed my kinsfolk from me,
and my acquaintances have only turned aside from me.
My relatives have failed,
and my close friends have forgotten me.
The sojourners in my house and my slave women count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
I call to my servant, but he does not answer;
I must personally plead with him.
My breath is repulsive to my wife,
and I am loathsome to my own family.
Little boys also despise me;
when I rise, then they talk against me.
All my intimate friends abhor me,
and these whom I have loved have turned against me.
My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
"Pity me, pity me, you my friends,
for God's hand has touched me.
Why do you pursue me like God?
And are not satisfied with my flesh?
"O that my words could be written down!
O that they could be inscribed in a scroll!
That with a pen of iron and with lead
they might be engraved on a rock forever!
But I myself know that my redeemer is alive,
and at the last he will stand up upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
but from my flesh I will see God,
whom I will see for myself,
and whom my eyes will see and not a stranger.
My heart faints within me.
"If you say, 'How will we persecute him?