“O earth, do not cover my blood, nor let there be a secret place for my cry.

My guests and my servant girls consider me a stranger; I am a foreigner in their eyes.

How often are they like straw before the wind, and like chaff swept away by a whirlwind?

just as I was in my most productive time, when God’s intimate friendship was experienced in my tent,

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you possess understanding!

Now the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord – and Satan also arrived among them.

Now the day came when Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house,

and a messenger came to Job, saying, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing beside them,

That day – let it be darkness; let not God on high regard it, nor let light shine on it!

Indeed, let that night be barren; let no shout of joy penetrate it!

Or why was I not buried like a stillborn infant, like infants who have never seen the light?

Then I would yet have my comfort, then I would rejoice, in spite of pitiless pain, for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

Relent, let there be no falsehood; reconsider, for my righteousness is intact!

For then you will lift up your face without blemish; you will be securely established and will not fear.

I am a laughingstock to my friends, I, who called on God and whom he answered – a righteous and blameless man is a laughingstock!

I was in peace, and he has shattered me. He has seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has made me his target;

“While he is filling his belly, God sends his burning anger against him, and rains down his blows upon him.

There are those who rebel against the light; they do not know its ways and they do not stay on its paths.

Before daybreak the murderer rises up; he kills the poor and the needy; in the night he is like a thief.

His possessions included 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys; in addition he had a very great household. Thus he was the greatest of all the people in the east.