There was a man in the country of Uz named Job. He was a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil.

His estate included 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the east.

Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought: Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts. This was Job’s regular practice.

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!”

That messenger was still speaking when yet another came and reported: “The Chaldeans formed three bands, made a raid on the camels, and took them away. They struck down the servants with the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported: “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house.

Then they sat on the ground with him seven days and nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw that his suffering was very intense.

After this, Job began to speak and cursed the day he was born.

May the day I was born perish,
and the night when they said,
“A boy is conceived.”

Why was I not stillborn;
why didn’t I die as I came from the womb?

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

Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling
and braced the knees that were buckling.

Consider: who has perished when he was innocent?
Where have the honest been destroyed?

A word was brought to me in secret;
my ears caught a whisper of it.

If I wash myself with snow,
and cleanse my hands with lye,

“Yet You concealed these thoughts in Your heart;
I know that this was Your hidden plan:

as water wears away stones
and torrents wash away the soil from the land,
so You destroy a man’s hope.

what was declared by wise men
and was not suppressed by their ancestors,

the land was given to them alone
when no foreigner passed among them.

I was at ease, but He shattered me;
He seized me by the scruff of the neck
and smashed me to pieces.
He set me up as His target;

Don’t you know that ever since antiquity,
from the time man was placed on earth,

You sent widows away empty-handed,
and the strength of the fatherless was crushed.

But it was He who filled their houses with good things.
The counsel of the wicked is far from me!

I would be as I was in the days of my youth
when God’s friendship rested on my tent,

when the Almighty was still with me
and my children were around me,

I was eyes to the blind
and feet to the lame.

I was a father to the needy,
and I examined the case of the stranger.

What use to me was the strength of their hands?
Their vigor had left them.

for from my youth, I raised him as his father,
and since the day I was born I guided the widow—

if I have gazed at the sun when it was shining
or at the moon moving in splendor,

so that my heart was secretly enticed
and I threw them a kiss,

So these three men quit answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.

Then Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite from the family of Ram became angry. He was angry at Job because he had justified himself rather than God.

He was also angry at Job’s three friends because they had failed to refute him and yet had condemned him.

So Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite replied:

I am young in years,
while you are old;
therefore I was timid and afraid
to tell you what I know.

I am just like you before God;
I was also pinched off from a piece of clay.

He will look at men and say,
“I have sinned and perverted what was right;
yet I did not get what I deserved.

Indeed, He lured you from the jaws of distress
to a spacious and unconfined place.
Your table was spread with choice food.