Did I say, 'Give to me?' or, 'Offer a present for me from your substance?'

When I lie down, I say, 'When shall I arise, and the night be gone?' I toss and turn until the dawning of the day.

When I say, 'My bed shall comfort me. My couch shall ease my complaint;'

If it is a matter of strength, behold, he is mighty! If of justice, 'Who,' says he, 'will summon me?'

"It is all the same. Therefore I say he destroys the blameless and the wicked.

If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;'

For you say, 'My doctrine is pure. I am clean in your eyes.'

If you say, 'How we will persecute him!' because the root of the matter is found in me,

yet he shall perish forever like his own dung. Those who have seen him shall say, 'Where is he?'

You say, 'God lays up his iniquity for his children.' Let him recompense it to himself, that he may know it.

For you say, 'Where is the house of the prince? Where is the tent in which the wicked lived?'

You say, 'What does God know? Can he judge through the thick darkness?

When they cast down, you shall say, 'be lifted up.' He will save the humble person.

The deep says, 'It isn't in me.' The sea says, 'It isn't with me.'

Destruction and Death say, 'We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.'

"Behold, I waited for your words, and I listened for your reasoning, while you searched out what to say.

Beware lest you say, 'We have found wisdom, God may refute him, not man;'

"They are amazed. They answer no more. They don't have a word to say.

then God is gracious to him, and says, 'Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom.'

He sings before men, and says, 'I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it didn't profit me.

If you have anything to say, answer me. Speak, for I desire to justify you.

Who says to a king, 'Vile!' or to nobles, 'Wicked!'?

"Do you think this to be your right, or do you say, 'My righteousness is more than God's,'

But none says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,

How much less when you say you don't see him. The cause is before him, and you wait for him!

"Bear with me a little, and I will show you; for I still have something to say on God's behalf.

Who has prescribed his way for him? Or who can say, 'You have committed unrighteousness?'

For he says to the snow, 'Fall on the earth;' likewise to the shower of rain, and to the showers of his mighty rain.