Job
28 “For there is a mine for silver
and a place for gold that they wash out.
2 Iron is taken out of earth,
and one melts stone to copper.
4 An intruding people breaks into ravines
that were forgotten by feet;
they suffer privations, they rove from men
5 To a country from which bread has gone out
and whose underpart turns to be like fire,
6 A place whose stones are malachite
and which has clods of gold,
7 A path no bird of prey knows
nor has a kite’s eye glimpsed it,
8 Which boldest beasts have not trodden
nor lion passed along it.
9 He puts his hand to the pyrite rock,
turns mountains up by their roots;
12 But where is wisdom to be had from,
and what is the place for insight?
13 No man knows the road to it,
and it is not to be found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says ‘it is not in me’
and the sea ‘I do not have it here.’
15 Solid gold is not to be given for it
nor silver to be weighed out as its price;
16 It is not to be balanced against nuggets from Ophir,
against the most precious beryl, or lapis lazuli;
17 Gold and glass will not match it,
a thing of red gold be an exchange for it;
19 The Nubian chrysolite will not match it,
nor against pure nugget-gold is it to be balanced;
20 And where does wisdom come from?
and what is the place for insight?
22 Death and the land of the gone forever say
‘We have heard a hearsay of it.’
23 God understands the road to it,
he knows the place for it,
24 Because he looks to the ends of the earth,
sees under all the sky,
26 When he made a law of nature for the rain
and a course for the lightning of thunder,
27 Then he saw it and described it,
made it sure and thoroughly searched it out,