Innocence Wronged

Job answers.

Not everyone who suffers sins,

Yet blessed with a long life, I’ve strayed

An ingrate and a renegade,

And condign punishment begins.

Roots rotted in the earth can bud,

And from uncleanness a fresh shoot

Can sprout, and after winter, fruit

Is lifted out of filthy mud.

Your condemnation’s false and smug,

And forgers of cruel lies you say

That children killed before their day,

Fall into pits their sins have dug.

Though I have sinned, and grievously,

I haven’t been the worst of men,

And with a chance to try again,

I’d strive to live more virtuously.

I can’t believe my guilt exceeds

The measure penitence can wring

From many years of suffering.

It’s true I’ve faltered and those deeds

Demand that I alone atone.

It’s mine to suffer, His to scourge,

To expiate when I can’t purge

And I will reap what I have sown.

Fallen and weak I don’t presume

To grab the knout out of His hand,

To usurp His right to reprimand,

Or choose the manner of my doom .

If horror at my guilt appalls

A spirit grief’s already broken,

That pain can’t pay a single token

From debts I owe and God recalls.

Yet faults I have amassed can’t spill

Onto the heads of generations

Born this morning. Condemnations

A father earned by his free will

Don’t pass to his posterity.

If my remaining days can’t hold

Atonement owed, then I’m too old.

The span of life bestowed on me

That prodigally I’ve not misspent

Suffices me to pay my debts

In lamentation and regrets.

I will discharge my punishment.

If my great sinfulness was more

Than righteous judgment could extract

From a bent back, already wracked

By pain, too withered and too sore

To feel the rod, He would have struck

Decades ago, when I was young.

The sentence given can’t outrun

The lifetime granted to the schmuck

Who sinned. My children didn’t die

To expiate their father’s crime.

My penalty allows me time

To hear the judgment and comply.

I will not seek to know how much

Of suffering I must endure,

Or question God’s judicature.

But why, oh why, does such harm touch

The innocent? I do not blame,

But in all meekness, I must ask.

Already doomed, this is my task,

An answer the forlorn must claim.