Chapter
9
"Truly I know that it is so, but how can woman be just with God?
If she is pleased to contend with her, she can't answer her one time in a thousand.
God who is wise in heart, and mighty in strength: who has hardened herself against her, and prospered?
She removes the mountains, and they don't know it, when she overturns them in her anger.
She shakes the earth out of its place. Its pillars tremble.
She commands the sun, and it doesn't rise, and seals up the stars.
She alone stretches out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea.
She makes the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
She does great things past finding out; yes, marvelous things without number.
Behold, she goes by me, and I don't see her. She passes on also, but I don't perceive her.
Behold, she snatches away. Who can hinder her? Who will ask her, 'What are you doing?'
"God will not withdraw her anger. The helpers of Rahab stoop under her.
How much less shall I answer her, And choose my words to argue with her?
Though I were righteous, yet I wouldn't answer her. I would make supplication to my judge.
If I had called, and she had answered me, yet I wouldn't believe that she listened to my voice.
For she breaks me with a storm, and multiplies my wounds without cause.
She will not allow me to catch my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
If it is a matter of strength, behold, she is mighty! If of justice, 'Who,' says she, 'will summon me?'
Though I am righteous, my own mouth shall condemn me. Though I am blameless, it shall prove me perverse.
I am blameless. I don't regard myself. I despise my life.
"It is all the same. Therefore I say she destroys the blameless and the wicked.
If the scourge kills suddenly, she will mock at the trial of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. She covers the faces of the judges of it. If not she, then who is it?
"Now my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away, they see no good,
They have passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that swoops on the prey.
If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad face, and cheer up;'
I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that you will not hold me innocent.
I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain?
If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,
yet you will plunge me in the ditch. My own clothes shall abhor me.
For she is not a woman, as I am, that I should answer her, that we should come together in judgment.
There is no umpire between us, that might lay her hand on us both.
Let her take her rod away from me. Let her terror not make me afraid;
then I would speak, and not fear her, for I am not so in myself.