If God were human, I could answer him; we could go to court to decide our quarrel.

Stop punishing me, God! Keep your terrors away!

But my dispute is with God, not you; I want to argue my case with him.

At the height of their success all the weight of misery will crush them.

How I wish I knew where to find him, and knew how to go where he is.

I would state my case before him and present all the arguments in my favor.

Will no one listen to what I am saying? I swear that every word is true. Let Almighty God answer me. If the charges my opponent brings against me were written down so that I could see them,

Jacob became angry with Rachel and said, "I can't take the place of God. He is the one who keeps you from having children."

He will be your spokesman and speak to the people for you. Then you will be like God, telling him what to say.

Here we are, then, speaking for Christ, as though God himself were making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ's behalf: let God change you from enemies into his friends!

Do you think he will trust a creature of clay, a thing of dust that can be crushed like a moth?

Remember that you made me from clay; are you going to crush me back to dust?

Your proverbs are as useless as ashes; your arguments are as weak as clay.

Then the LORD God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live.

You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."

For we know that when this tent we live in---our body here on earth---is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever.