1. But Job answered and said,

2. Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!

3. For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up.

4. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me.

5. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass? or loweth the ox over his fodder?

6. Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg?

7. The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat.

8. Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for!

9. Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand, and cut me off!

10. Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

11. What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?

12. Is my strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass?

13. Is not my help in me? and is wisdom driven quite from me?

14. To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend; but he forsaketh the fear of the Almighty.

15. My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away;

16. Which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid:

17. What time they wax warm, they vanish: when it is hot, they are consumed out of their place.

18. The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing, and perish.

19. The troops of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited for them.

20. They were confounded because they had hoped; they came thither, and were ashamed.

21. For now ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid.

22. Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance?

23. Or, Deliver me from the enemy’s hand? or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty?

24. Teach me, and I will hold my tongue: and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.

25. How forcible are right words! but what doth your arguing reprove?

5 more verses…

About this reader

What is Scripture?

Scripture is a browser-based reader for sixteen sacred texts spanning multiple religious and literary traditions. It provides chapter-by-chapter navigation, full-text search across all works, word concordance with frequency analysis, verse-linked notes, text-to-speech, and deep linking to any chapter or verse.

Traditions Represented

The collection spans Abrahamic, East Asian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Finnish, and Norse traditions. It includes King James biblical text and Apocrypha, Pickthall's Quran, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Legge's Four Books, Tao Te Ching, and Book of Poetry, Chamberlain's Kojiki, West's Bundahishn, Kern's Lotus Sutra, Haug and West's Arda Viraf, Crawford's Kalevala, and Bellows' Poetic Edda.

The committed manifests and chapter files currently describe 121 books, 2,724 chapters, and 63,141 verse records. In poetry and prose works, a verse record can represent a line or paragraph rather than a canonically numbered scriptural verse.

Licensing

The application source is AGPL-3.0. Generated text downloads and their structured arrangement are CC BY-SA 4.0; the underlying historic source texts are treated as public-domain inputs. The corpus metadata therefore describes the distributed arrangement with its CC BY-SA license rather than the Public Domain Mark.

Concordance and Related Passages

The concordance is an exact-word occurrence index with linked records grouped by work. Related Passages is separate: a TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) cosine-similarity index compares chapter vocabulary after stop-word removal and stores up to five cross-book matches above its threshold. It is a lexical discovery aid, not a claim of historical or theological equivalence.

Deep Linking

Every chapter and verse has a permanent URL. Chapter links follow the pattern /scripture/{work}/{book}-{chapter} (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1 for Genesis 1). Verse links append the verse number (e.g., /scripture/ot/gen-1:26 for Genesis 1:26). These URLs can be shared, bookmarked, or cited directly.

Accessibility

Scripture supports keyboard navigation throughout: Tab moves between controls, Enter activates verse actions, and arrow keys navigate chapters. The reading pane has a skip-to-content link. All overlays (search, concordance) are focus-trapped ARIA dialogs. Dynamic content regions use aria-live for screen reader announcements. Light and dark themes are available through the theme toggle. Verse numbers are visible to assistive technology. No flashing content or motion hazards.

Scripture is part of a suite of educational simulations at a9l.im. Explore particle physics with Geon, redistricting with Gerry, or cellular metabolism with Cyano.