Sermon for March 9th, 2025

Job 16:1-22 (OT p. 465) (Neal's Translation)

1 Job answered, and said: 2 I have often heard these things; miserable comforters are you all. 3 Will these windy words have no end? Or what drives you, that you keep on speaking? 4 I could also speak as you do, if you were in my place; I could string together words against you and shake my head at you. 5 Or I could strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips would relieve your sorrow. 6 But if I speak, my suffering is not relieved, and if I remain silent, how much of it leaves me?

7 Surely now he has worn me out; God, you have destroyed all my people. 8 You have shriveled me up as a witness against me; my emaciated face confirms and testifies to this. 9 In his wrath, he tears and hates me; he grinds his teeth upon me; my enemy sharpens his focus upon me. 10 They gape at me open-mouthed; shamefully, they strike me on the cheek; they are united against me. 11 God has surrendered me to fools and tossed me into the hands of the wicked.

12 I was at peace, but he broke me; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he made me his target, 13 and surrounded me with his archers. He pierces my heart and shows no mercy; he spills my blood on the ground. 14 He inflicts me with wound upon wound; he runs over me like a giant. 15 I have put sackcloth on my skin and lowered my horns to the dirt. 16 My face is smeared with weeping, and upon my eyelids is the shadow of death, 17 even though there is no guilt in my hands, and my prayer is pure.

18 Do not conceal my blood, O Earth; don't let my cries fall to the ground. 19 Even now--For God's sake!--my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. 20 My friends speak eloquently against me, while my eyes pour out tears to God.

21 If only someone could intercede with God on behalf of a mortal, just as a man pleads on behalf of his neighbor. 22 For when a few more years have passed, I will walk the road of no return.