For now you have become like these streams that are no help; you see a terror, and are afraid.

If he is uprooted from his place, then that place will disown him, saying, ‘I have never seen you!’

If someone wishes to contend with him, he cannot answer him one time in a thousand.

“How much less, then, can I answer him and choose my words to argue with him!

“It is all one! That is why I say, ‘He destroys the blameless and the guilty.’

I dread all my sufferings, for I know that you do not hold me blameless.

who would take his rod away from me so that his terror would not make me afraid.

Will your idle talk reduce people to silence, and will no one rebuke you when you mock?

“But now, ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds of the sky and they will tell you.

Why do I put myself in peril, and take my life in my hands?

Even if he slays me, I will hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face!

Look away from him and let him desist, until he fulfills his time like a hired man.

He does not expect to escape from darkness; he is marked for the sword;

he lived in ruined towns and in houses where no one lives, where they are ready to crumble into heaps.

But the righteous man holds to his way, and the one with clean hands grows stronger.

He has blocked my way so I cannot pass, and has set darkness over my paths.

Is my complaint against a man? If so, why should I not be impatient?

But their prosperity is not their own doing. The counsel of the wicked is far from me!

Whatever you decide on a matter, it will be established for you, and light will shine on your ways.

O that I knew where I might find him, that I could come to his place of residence!