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📚✭“I made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I lustfully consider a maiden? 2 📚For what does God apportion from above? And what is the inheritance the Almighty appoints from above?
3 📚Is it not destruction for the wicked, and disaster for evildoers?
4 📚✭Does he not see my ways and count all my steps?
5 📚✭“If I have walked in falsehood, or if my foot has hurried after deceit
6 📚(Let me be weighed in accurate scales, that God may know my integrity),
7 📚If my step has turned out of the way, and my heart has followed my eyes, and if any stain has stuck to my hands,
8 📚Then let me sow and someone else eat it, yes, let my crops be uprooted.
9 📚✭“If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked near my neighbor’s door,
10 📚Then may my wife grind for someone else, and may others bow down over her.
11 📚For that would be a wicked deed, yes, iniquity for the judges to punish.
12 📚For that would be a fire that consumes to destruction✭, that would uproot all my increase.
13 📚✭“If I have despised the claim of my male or female servant when they complained to me,
14 📚Then what would I do when God rises up? And when he confronts me, what would I answer him?
15 📚Did not he who made me in the womb, make him? Did not the same one form us in the womb?
16 📚✭“If I have held back from the poor what they desired, or caused the eyes of the widow to fail,
17 📚Or have eaten my morsel alone, without the fatherless eating of it,
18 (But from my youth I brought him up like a father, and from my birth I guided the widow),
19 📚If I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing, or any poor person without a covering,
20 📚If he had no reason to bless me, and if he was not warmed by the fleece from my sheep,
21 📚If I have raised my hand against the fatherless, when I saw support for this in the gate✭,
22 📚Then let my arm fall from my shoulder, and my arm be broken at the joint.
23 📚For destruction from God terrified me, and because of his majesty I could not endure.
24 📚✭“If I have made gold my hope, or said to fine gold, ‘You are my confidence’,
25 📚If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gotten much,
26 📚If I looked at the shining sun or the moon moving in brightness,
27 📚And my heart was secretly enticed and my mouth kissed my hand in worship,
28 📚This also would be iniquity to be judged, for I would have denied God above.
29 📚✭“If I rejoiced at the destruction of one who hated me, or exulted when disaster found him
30 📚(But I have not allowed my mouth to sin by invoking a curse against his soul),
31 📚✭If the men of my tent have not said, ‘Who is there of us who has not been satisfied with Job’s meat?’
32 📚(The stranger never had to spend the night in the street, for I opened my door to the traveller),
33 📚✭If I have covered my transgressions like Adam✭, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom,
34 📚Because I feared the great multitude, or dreaded the contempt of families, so that I kept silent and did not go out the door
35 📚✭“(Oh, that someone would hear me! See, my desire✭ is that the Almighty would answer me, and that my adversary would write down the indictment in a book!
36 📚Surely I would carry it around on my shoulder, and fasten it on me like a crown.
37 📚I would give him an account of all my steps. I would approach him like a prince),
38 📚✭“If my land cries out against me, or if its furrows complain,
39 📚If I have eaten its produce without cost to me, or caused its owners to lose their lives,
40 📚May thistles grow up instead of wheat, and weeds instead of barley!” The words of Job are ended.