He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported: “A lightning storm struck from heaven. It burned up the sheep and the servants and devoured them, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

when He established a limit for the rain
and a path for the lightning,

See how He spreads His lightning around Him
and covers the depths of the sea.

He covers His hands with lightning
and commands it to hit its mark.

He lets it loose beneath the entire sky;
His lightning to the ends of the earth.

Then there comes a roaring sound;
God thunders with His majestic voice.
He does not restrain the lightning
when His rumbling voice is heard.

He saturates clouds with moisture;
He scatters His lightning through them.

Do you know how God directs His clouds
or makes their lightning flash?

Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain
or clears the way for lightning,

Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go?
Do they report to you: “Here we are”?

Or why was I not hidden like a miscarried child,
like infants who never see daylight?

Like a slave he longs for shade;
like a hired man he waits for his pay.

They sweep by like boats made of papyrus,
like an eagle swooping down on its prey.

Are Your days like those of a human,
or Your years like those of a man,

Did You not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?

It is a land of blackness like the deepest darkness,
gloomy and chaotic,
where even the light is like the darkness.”

Man wears out like something rotten,
like a moth-eaten garment.

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He blossoms like a flower, then withers;
he flees like a shadow and does not last.

He will be like a vine that drops its unripe grapes
and like an olive tree that sheds its blossoms.

He will fly away like a dream and never be found;
he will be chased away like a vision in the night.

Are they like straw before the wind,
like chaff a storm sweeps away?

They are exalted for a moment, then they are gone;
they are brought low and shrivel up like everything else.
They wither like heads of grain.

May my enemy be like the wicked
and my opponent like the unjust.

Though he piles up silver like dust
and heaps up a wardrobe like clay—

Terrors are turned loose against me;
they chase my dignity away like the wind,
and my prosperity has passed by like a cloud.

My heart is like unvented wine;
it is about to burst like new wineskins.

What man is like Job?
He drinks derision like water.

Do you have an arm like God’s?
Can you thunder with a voice like His?

He makes the depths seethe like a cauldron;
he makes the sea like an ointment jar.