Job 41:1–34 (NIV84)

¹ “Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? ² Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? ³ Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? ⁴ Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? ⁵ Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? ⁶ Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? ⁷ Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? ⁸ If you lay a hand on him, you will remember the struggle and never do it again! ⁹ Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering. ¹⁰ No one is fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me? ¹¹ Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me. ¹² “I will not fail to speak of his limbs, his strength and his graceful form. ¹³ Who can strip off his outer coat? Who would approach him with a bridle? ¹⁴ Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth? ¹⁵ His back has rows of shields tightly sealed together; ¹⁶ each is so close to the next that no air can pass between. ¹⁷ They are joined fast to one another; they cling together and cannot be parted. ¹⁸ His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn. ¹⁹ Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out. ²⁰ Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds. ²¹ His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth. ²² Strength resides in his neck; dismay goes before him. ²³ The folds of his flesh are tightly joined; they are firm and immovable. ²⁴ His chest is hard as rock, hard as a lower millstone. ²⁵ When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing. ²⁶ The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin. ²⁷Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood. ²⁸ Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him. ²⁹A club seems to him but a piece of straw; he laughs at the rattling of the lance. ³⁰ His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. ³¹ He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. ³² Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair. ³³ Nothing on earth is his equal— a creature without fear. ³⁴ He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.”

Psalm 42:1–11 (NIV84)

¹ As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. ² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? ³ My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ⁴ These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. ⁵ Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and ⁶ my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar. ⁷ Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. ⁸ By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life. ⁹ I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” ¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?” ¹¹ Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Luke 6:12–26 (NIV84)

¹² One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. ¹³ When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: ¹⁴ Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, ¹⁵ Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, ¹⁶ Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. ¹⁷ He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, ¹⁸ who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured, ¹⁹ and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all. ²⁰ Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ²¹ Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ²² Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. ²³ “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. ²⁴ “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. ²⁵Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. ²⁶Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.