Chapter 19 (Third Sunday of Lent)

Then Job answered: 
‘How long will you torment me,
   and break me in pieces with words? 
These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
   are you not ashamed to wrong me? 
And even if it is true that I have erred,
   my error remains with me. 
If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
   and make my humiliation an argument against me, 
know then that God has put me in the wrong,
   and closed his net around me. 
Even when I cry out, “Violence!” I am not answered;
   I call aloud, but there is no justice. 
He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
   and he has set darkness upon my paths. 
He has stripped my glory from me,
   and taken the crown from my head. 
He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
   he has uprooted my hope like a tree. 
He has kindled his wrath against me,
   and counts me as his adversary. 
His troops come on together;
   they have thrown up siege-works against me,
   and encamp around my tent. 

‘He has put my family far from me,
   and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 
My relatives and my close friends have failed me; 
   the guests in my house have forgotten me;
my serving-girls count me as a stranger;
   I have become an alien in their eyes. 
I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
   I must myself plead with him. 
My breath is repulsive to my wife;
   I am loathsome to my own family. 
Even young children despise me;
   when I rise, they talk against me. 
All my intimate friends abhor me,
   and those whom I loved have turned against me. 
My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
   and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 
Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
   for the hand of God has touched me! 
Why do you, like God, pursue me,
   never satisfied with my flesh? 

‘O that my words were written down!
   O that they were inscribed in a book! 
O that with an iron pen and with lead
   they were engraved on a rock for ever! 
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
   and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; 
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
   then in my flesh I shall see God, 
whom I shall see on my side,
   and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
   My heart faints within me! 
If you say, “How we will persecute him!”
   and, “The root of the matter is found in him”; 
be afraid of the sword,
   for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
   so that you may know there is a judgement.’ 

Commentary

Now, when the Creator of all things has even made use of a bird to disclose the magnitude of his promises to us, need we find it such a great wonder that he has a resurrection in store for those who have served him in holiness and in the confidence of a sound faith? For in Scripture we read, You will raise me up, and I will praise you; and also, After I had lain down and fallen asleep, I rose up again; for you are with me. Job too, says, You will raise up this flesh of mine which has had all these trials to endure. Seeing then that we have this hope, let us knit fast our souls to him who is ever true to his word and righteous in his judgements. (St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians)

Musical Selection (Scott Soper)

Again.

Collect

O God, living and true,
look upon your people,
whose dry and stony hearts are parched with thirst.
Unseal the living water of your Spirit;
let it become within us an ever-flowing spring,
leaping up to eternal life.
Thus may we worship you in spirit and in truth
through Christ, our deliverance and hope,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
holy and mighty God for ever and ever. Amen.