Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?
The book that holds this line is a poem whose force and beauty come through more fully when it is taken in as a whole than when it is broken into disconnected fragments. The line itself stands within the dispute between Job and his three friends over the meaning of his afflictions. In it Job presses upon his friends that they had personally seen the facts, yet the conclusions they drew from them were empty. They had argued from their own wisdom and observation that a thoroughly good person could not suffer, and his affliction proved that reasoning to be mistaken.
The book that holds this line is a poem whose force and beauty come through more fully when it is taken in as a whole than when it is broken into disconnected fragments. The line itself stands within the dispute between Job and his three friends over the meaning of his afflictions. In it Job presses upon his friends that they had personally seen the facts, yet the conclusions they drew from them were empty. They had argued from their own wisdom and observation that a thoroughly good person could not suffer, and his affliction proved that reasoning to be mistaken.