Job 29:16–19

⁷The righteous considereth the cause of the poor: but the wicked regardeth not to know it.

⁵A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.

⁷And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter.

⁴They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

¹⁸(For from my youth he was brought up with me, as with a father, and I have guided her from my mother’s womb;)

²It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

¹⁶¶ Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him.

¹⁷And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house.

¹⁸And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house.

¹⁹And this woman’s child died in the night; because she overlaid it.

²⁰And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom.

²¹And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.

²²And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king.

²³Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living.

²⁴And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king.

²⁵And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.

²⁶Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.

²⁷Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.

²⁸And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment.

¹⁴Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;

⁸¶ If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose;

⁹And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment:

¹⁰And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee:

¹BE ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

²⁶And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves.

²⁷Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

⁷Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.

¹⁴There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.

³⁵And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.

⁶Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.

⁸As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

³Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:

⁶And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved.

⁷Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled.

¹²And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

¹⁶Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord.

¹⁶After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations.

¹⁷So Job died, being old and full of days.

²⁶Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.

⁴Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.

¹⁶With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

⁴⁹And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.

⁹¶ Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil!

²³O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!

⁸For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

³And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

⁵I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

⁶His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.

⁷They that dwell under his shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon.

¹⁶His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his branch be cut off.