Job Continues: A Plea to God
1 q“I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my rcomplaint;
I will speak in the sbitterness of my soul.
2 I will say to God, tDo not condemn me;
let me know why you ucontend against me.
3 Does it seem good to you to oppress,
to despise the work of your hands
and favor the designs of the wicked?
4 Have you eyes of flesh?
Do you see as man sees?
5 Are your days as the days of man,
or vyour years as a man’s years,
6 that wyou seek out my iniquity
and search for my sin,
7 although you know that I am not guilty,
and there is none to deliver out of your hand?
8 xYour hands fashioned and made me,
and now you have destroyed me altogether.
9 yRemember that you have made me like zclay;
and will you areturn me to the dust?
10 Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?
11 You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and bknit me together with bones and sinews.
12 You have granted me life and steadfast love,
and your care has preserved my spirit.
13 Yet these things you hid in your heart;
I know that this was your purpose.
14 If I sin, you watch me
and cdo not acquit me of my iniquity.
15 If I am guilty, woe to me!
If dI am in the right, I cannot lift up my head,
for I am filled with disgrace
and look on my affliction.
16 And were my head lifted up,1 you would hunt me like a lion
and again work wonders against me.
17 You renew your witnesses against me
and increase your vexation toward me;
eyou bring fresh troops against me.
18 f“Why did you bring me out from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me
19 and were as though I had not been,
carried from the womb to the grave.
20 gAre not my days few?
Then cease, and leave me alone, that hI may find a little cheer
21 before I go—and iI shall not return—
to the land of jdarkness and deep shadow,
22 the land of gloom like thick darkness,
like deep shadow without any order,
where light is as thick darkness.”
The Healing at the Pool on the Sabbath
1 After this there was ha feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the iSheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic1 called Bethesda,2 which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.3 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, jtake up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
kNow that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews4 said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and lit is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! mSin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were npersecuting Jesus, obecause he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
Jesus Is Equal with God
18 This was why the Jews were pseeking all the more qto kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, rmaking himself sequal with God.
