Then Solomon went to Ezion Geber and to Elat on the coast in the land of Edom.

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your wise sayings and insight was true!

He ruled all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines as far as the border of Egypt.

Yet they will become his subjects, so they can experience how serving me differs from serving the surrounding nations.”

He appointed judges throughout the land and in each of the fortified cities of Judah.

He remained in hiding in God’s temple for six years, while Athaliah was ruling over the land.

All the people of the land celebrated, for the city had rest now that they had killed Athaliah.

They talked about the God of Jerusalem as if he were one of the man-made gods of the nations of the earth.

The people of the land took Jehoahaz son of Josiah and made him king in his father’s place in Jerusalem.

The king of Egypt prevented him from ruling in Jerusalem and imposed on the land a special tax of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

Then the local people began to discourage the people of Judah and to dishearten them from building.

You multiplied their descendants like the stars of the sky. You brought them to the land you had told their ancestors to enter in order to possess.

“We will not give our daughters in marriage to the neighboring peoples, and we will not take their daughters in marriage for our sons.

Then Job got up and tore his robe. He shaved his head, and then he threw himself down with his face to the ground.

he gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields;

For we were born yesterday and do not have knowledge, since our days on earth are but a shadow.

If a land has been given into the hand of a wicked man, he covers the faces of its judges; if it is not he, then who is it?

to the land of utter darkness, like the deepest darkness, and the deepest shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.”

He deprives the leaders of the earth of their understanding; he makes them wander in a trackless desert waste.

as water wears away stones, and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy man’s hope.