The One Year Bible TLB (180 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
The godly shall be firmly planted in the land and live there forever.
30-31
The godly man is a good counselor because he is just and fair and knows right from wrong.
32
Evil men spy on the godly, waiting for an excuse to accuse them and then demanding their death.
33
But the Lord will not let these evil men succeed, nor let the godly be condemned when they are brought before the judge.
34
Don’t be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and in due season he will honor you with every blessing,
*
and you will see the wicked destroyed.
35-36
I myself have seen it happen: a proud and evil man, towering like a cedar of Lebanon, but when I looked again, he was gone! I searched but could not find him!
37
But the good man—what a different story! For the good man—the blameless, the upright, the man of peace—he has a wonderful future ahead of him. For him there is a happy ending.
38
But evil men shall be destroyed, and their posterity shall be cut off.
39
The Lord saves the godly! He is their salvation and their refuge when trouble comes.
40
Because they trust in him, he helps them and delivers them from the plots of evil men.
God loathes the gifts of evil men, especially if they are trying to bribe him!
August 23Bildad the Shuhite replies to Job:
2
“How long will you go on like this, Job, blowing words around like wind?
3
Does God twist justice?
4
If your children sinned against him, and he punished them,
5
and you begged Almighty God for them—
6
if you were pure and good, he would hear your prayer and answer you and bless you with a happy home.
7
And though you started with little, you would end with much.
8
“Read the history books and see—
9
for we were born but yesterday and know so little; our days here on earth are as transient as shadows.
10
But the wisdom of the past will teach you. The experience of others will speak to you, reminding you that
11-13
those who forget God have no hope. They are like rushes without any mire to grow in; or grass without water to keep it alive. Suddenly it begins to wither, even before it is cut.
14
A man without God is trusting in a spider’s web. Everything he counts on will collapse.
15
If he counts on his home for security, it won’t last.
16
At dawn he seems so strong and virile, like a green plant; his branches spread across the garden.
17
His roots are in the stream, down among the stones.
18
But when he disappears, he isn’t even missed!
19
That is all he can look forward to! And others spring up from the earth to replace him!
20
“But look! God will not cast away a good man, nor prosper evildoers.
21
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.
22
Those who hate you shall be clothed with shame, and the wicked destroyed.”
9:
1
Job’s reply:
2
“Yes, I know all that. You’re not telling me anything new. But how can a man be truly good in the eyes of God?
3
If God decides to argue with him, can a man answer even one question of a thousand he asks?
4
For God is so wise and so mighty. Who has ever opposed him successfully?
5
“Suddenly he moves the mountains, overturning them in his anger.
6
He shakes the earth to its foundations.
7
The sun won’t rise, the stars won’t shine, if he commands it so!
8
Only he has stretched the heavens out and stalked along the seas.
9
He made the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades, and the constellations of the southern Zodiac.
10
“He does incredible miracles, too many to count.
11
He passes by, invisible; he moves along, but I don’t see him go.
12
When he sends death to snatch a man away,
*
who can stop him? Who dares to ask him, ‘What are you doing?’
13
“And God does not abate his anger. The pride of man
*
collapses before him.
14
And who am I that I should try to argue with Almighty God, or even reason with him?
15
Even if I were sinless, I wouldn’t say a word. I would only plead for mercy.
16
And even if my prayers were answered, I could scarce believe that he had heard my cry.
17
For he is the one who destroys, and multiplies my wounds without a cause.
18
He will not let me breathe, but fills me with bitter sorrows.
19
He alone is strong and just.
20
“But I? Am I righteous? My own mouth says no. Even if I were perfect, God would prove me wicked.
21
And even if I am utterly innocent, I dare not think of it. I despise what I am.
22
Innocent or evil, it is all the same to him, for he destroys both kinds.
23
He will laugh when calamity crushes the innocent.
24
The whole earth is in the hands of the wicked. God blinds the eyes of the judges and lets them be unfair. If not he, then who?
25
“My life passes swiftly away, filled with tragedy.
26
My years disappear like swift ships, like the eagle that swoops upon its prey.
27
“If I decided to forget my complaints against God, to end my sadness and be cheerful,
28
then he would pour even greater sorrows upon me. For I know that you will not hold me innocent, O God,
29
but will condemn me. So what’s the use of trying?
30
Even if I were to wash myself with purest water and cleanse my hands with lye to make them utterly clean,
31
even so you would plunge me into the ditch and mud; and even my clothing would be less filthy than you consider me to be!
32-33
“And I cannot defend myself, for you are no mere man as I am. If you were, then we could discuss it fairly, but there is no umpire between us, no middle man, no mediator to bring us together.
34
Oh, let him stop beating me, so that I need no longer live in terror of his punishment.
35
Then I could speak without fear to him and tell him boldly that I am not guilty.
10:
1
“I am weary of living. Let me complain freely. I will speak in my sorrow and bitterness.
2
I will say to God, ‘Don’t just condemn me—tell me
why
you are doing it.
3
Does it really seem right to you to oppress and despise me, a man you have made; and to send joy and prosperity to the wicked?
4-7
Are you unjust
*
like men? Is your life so short that you must hound me for sins you know full well I’ve not committed? Is it because you know no one can save me from your hand?
8
“‘You have made me, and yet you destroy me.
9
Oh, please remember that I’m made of dust—will you change me back again to dust so soon?
10
You have already poured me from bottle to bottle like milk and curdled me like cheese.
11
You gave me skin and flesh and knit together bones and sinews.
12
You gave me life and were so kind and loving to me, and I was preserved by your care.
13-14
“‘Yet all the time your real motive in making me was to destroy me if I sinned, and to refuse to forgive my iniquity.
15
Just the slightest wickedness, and I am done for. And if I’m good, that doesn’t count. I am filled with frustration.
16
If I start to get up off the ground, you leap upon me like a lion and quickly finish me off.
17
Again and again you witness against me and pour out an ever-increasing volume of wrath upon me and bring fresh armies against me.
18
“‘Why then did you even let me be born? Why didn’t you let me die at birth?
19
Then I would have been spared this miserable existence. I would have gone directly from the womb to the grave.
20-21
Can’t you see how little time I have left? Oh, leave me alone that I may have a little moment of comfort before I leave for the land of darkness and the shadow of death, never to return—
22
a land as dark as midnight, a land of the shadow of death where only confusion reigns and where the brightest light is dark as midnight.’”
11:
1
Zophar the Naamathite replies to Job:
2
“Shouldn’t someone stem this torrent of words? Is a man proved right by all this talk?
3
Should I remain silent while you boast? When you mock God, shouldn’t someone make you ashamed?
4
You claim you are pure in the eyes of God!
5
Oh, that God would speak and tell you what he thinks!
6
Oh, that he would make you truly see yourself, for he knows everything you’ve done. Listen! God is doubtless punishing you far less than you deserve!
7
“Do you know the mind and purposes of God? Will long searching make them known to you? Are you qualified to judge the Almighty?
8
He is as faultless as heaven is high—but who are you? His mind is fathomless—what can you know in comparison?
9
His Spirit is broader than the earth and wider than the sea.
10
If he rushes in and makes an arrest, and calls the court to order, who is going to stop him?
11
For he knows perfectly all the faults and sins of mankind; he sees all sin without searching.
12
“Mere man is as likely to be wise as a wild donkey’s colt is likely to be born a man!
13-14
“Before you turn to God and stretch out your hands to him, get rid of your sins and leave all iniquity behind you.
15
Only then, without the spots of sin to defile you, can you walk steadily forward to God without fear.
16
Only then can you forget your misery. It will all be in the past.
17
And your life will be cloudless; any darkness will be as bright as morning!
18
“You will have courage because you will have hope. You will take your time and rest in safety.
19
You will lie down unafraid, and many will look to you for help.
20
But the wicked shall find no way to escape; their only hope is death.”
Now let me remind you, brothers, of what the Gospel really is, for it has not changed—it is the same Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is squarely built upon this wonderful message;
2
and it is this Good News that saves you if you still firmly believe it, unless of course you never really believed it in the first place.
3
I passed on to you right from the first what had been told to me, that Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures said he would,
4
and that he was buried, and that three days afterwards he arose from the grave just as the prophets foretold.
5
He was seen by Peter and later by the rest of “the Twelve.”
*
6
After that he was seen by more than five hundred Christian brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now.
7
Then James saw him, and later all the apostles.
8
Last of all I saw him too, long after the others, as though I had been born almost too late for this.
9
For I am the least worthy of all the apostles, and I shouldn’t even be called an apostle at all after the way I treated the church of God.
10
But whatever I am now it is all because God poured out such kindness and grace upon me—and not without results: for I have worked harder than all the other apostles, yet actually I wasn’t doing it, but God working in me, to bless me.
11
It makes no difference who worked the hardest, I or they; the important thing is that we preached the Gospel to you and you believed it.
12
But tell me this! Since you believe what we preach, that
Christ
rose from the dead, why are some of you saying that dead people will never come back to life again?
13
For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ must still be dead.
14
And if he is still dead, then all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is empty, worthless, hopeless;
15
and we apostles are all liars because we have said that God raised Christ from the grave, and of course that isn’t true if the dead do not come back to life again.
16
If they don’t, then Christ is still dead,
17
and you are very foolish to keep on trusting God to save you, and you are still under condemnation for your sins;
18
in that case, all Christians who have died are lost!
19
And if being a Christian is of value to us only now in this life, we are the most miserable of creatures.
20
But the fact is that Christ did actually rise from the dead and has become the first of millions
*
who will come back to life again someday.
21
Death came into the world because of what one man (Adam) did, and it is because of what this other man (Christ) has done that now there is the resurrection from the dead.
22
Everyone dies because all of us are related to Adam, being members of his sinful race, and wherever there is sin, death results. But all who are related to Christ will rise again.
23
Each, however, in his own turn: Christ rose first; then when Christ comes back, all his people will become alive again.
24
After that the end will come when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having put down all enemies of every kind.
25
For Christ will be King until he has defeated all his enemies,
26
including the last enemy—death. This too must be defeated and ended.
27
For the rule and authority over all things has been given to Christ by his Father; except, of course, Christ does not rule over the Father himself, who gave him this power to rule.
28
When Christ has finally won the battle against all his enemies, then he, the Son of God, will put himself also under his Father’s orders, so that God who has given him the victory over everything else will be utterly supreme.