But put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh [and severely afflict him]; and he will curse You to Your face.”

So they sat down on the ground with Job for seven days and seven nights and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

“For now I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept then, I would have been at rest [in death],

“For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea;
Therefore my words have been incoherent,

“Then I would still have consolation,
And I would jump for joy amid unsparing pain,
That I have not denied or hidden the words of the Holy One.

“God is wise in heart and mighty in strength;
Who has [ever] defied or challenged Him and remained unharmed?

‘I should have been as though I had not existed;
[I should have been] carried from the womb to the grave.’

“My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh,
And I have escaped [death] by the skin of my teeth.

“That with an iron stylus and [molten] lead
They were engraved in the rock forever!

“Even after my [mortal] skin is destroyed [by death],
Yet from my [immortal] flesh I will see God,

“You have sent widows away empty-handed,
And the arms (strength) of the fatherless have been broken.

“They are the sons of [worthless and nameless] fools,
They have been driven out of the land.

“If my heart has been enticed and I was made a fool by a woman,
Or if I have [covetously] lurked at my neighbor’s door [until his departure],

(But from my youth the orphan grew up with me as with a father,
And from my mother’s womb I have been the widow’s guide),

And my heart became secretly enticed [by them],
And my hand threw a kiss from my mouth [in respect to them],

This also would have been [a heinous] sin calling for judgment,
For I would have denied God above.

“I assure you, the men of my tent have said,
‘Who can find one [in need] who has not been satisfied with his meat’?

“Man is also disciplined with pain on his bed,
And with unceasing complaint in his bones,

“Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?