The Holy Bible – Knox Translation
The Book of Job
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Chapter 28
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1
Where, then, does wisdom lie?✻ Easy to trace where the veins of silver run, where gold-ore is refined,
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where iron is dug from the depths of earth, and rocks must be melted to yield copper.
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See how man has done away with the darkness, has pierced into the very heart of things, into caves under ground, black as death’s shadow!
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Where yonder ravine cuts them off from the shepherd-folk, the miners toil, forgotten; lost to all track, far from the haunts of men.✻
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That earth, from whose surface our bread comes to us, must be probed by fire beneath,
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till the rocks yield sapphires, and the clods gold.
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Here are passages no bird discovers in its flight, no vulture’s eye has seen;
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that never gave roving merchant✻ shelter, or the lioness a lair.
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Boldly man matches himself against the flint, uproots the mountain,
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cuts channels through the rock, where things of price have dazzled his eye;
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narrowly he scans the river’s depths, and brings to light all they hide.
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But wisdom, tell me where to search for wisdom; tell me in what cache discernment lies?
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How should man set a price on it? This earth our pleasant home, yields no return of it;
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Not here, cries the abyss beneath us, and the sea echoes, Not here.
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Not for pure gold is it bartered, or weighed against silver in the balance;
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not the bright wares of the Indies, nor jewel of sardonyx, nor sapphire can vie with it;
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it is not to be matched with treasures of glass or gold, rivalled by all the goldsmith’s workmanship.
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Do not talk of coral or of crystal;✻ for wisdom you must make deeper search still;
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with wisdom the topaz from Ethiopia and the finest gold-leaf cannot compare.
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Whence, then, does wisdom come to us; where is discernment to be found?
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That is the secret kept hidden from beast on earth and bird in heaven;
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the shadow-world of death claims no more than to have heard the rumour of it.
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Only God knows the way to it, only God can tell where it lies,
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he whose view reaches to the world’s end, sees all that passes under the wide heavens.
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He, when first he took scale and measuring-line to set wind and water their task,
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when he appointed a time for the rain’s abating, and a track for the whistling storm,
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descried wisdom already; traced its plan, and set all in order, and mastered it.
28
To man, he has told this much, that wisdom is fearing the Lord; there lies discernment, in refusing the evil path.
