Job 33:8-27

‘But you have said in my hearing – I heard the very words – “I am pure, I have done no wrong; I am clean and free from sin. Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy. He fastens my feet in shackles; he keeps close watch on all my paths.” ‘But I tell you, in this you are not right, for God is greater than any mortal. Why do you complain to him that he responds to no-one’s words? For God does speak – now one way, now another – though no-one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword. ‘Or someone may be chastened on a bed of pain with constant distress in their bones, so that their body finds food repulsive and their soul loathes the choicest meal. Their flesh wastes away to nothing, and their bones, once hidden, now stick out. They draw near to the pit, and their life to the messengers of death. Yet if there is an angel at their side, a messenger, one out of a thousand, sent to tell them how to be upright, and he is gracious to that person and says to God, “Spare them from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for them – let their flesh be renewed like a child’s; let them be restored as in the days of their youth” – then that person can pray to God and find favour with him, they will see God’s face and shout for joy; he will restore them to full well-being. And they will go to others and say, “I have sinned, and I have perverted what is right, but I did not get what I deserved.