1 | Then Job answered: |
2 | "How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? |
3 | These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? |
4 | And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. |
5 | If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, |
6 | know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net about me. |
7 | Behold, I cry out, `Violence!' but I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice. |
8 | He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. |
9 | He has stripped from me my glory, and taken the crown from my head. |
10 | He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. |
11 | He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. |
12 | His troops come on together; they have cast up siegeworks against me, and encamp round about my tent. |
13 | "He has put my brethren far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. |
14 | My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me; |
15 | the guests in my house have forgotten me; my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. |
16 | I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must beseech him with my mouth. |
17 | I am repulsive to my wife, loathsome to the sons of my own mother. |
18 | Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. |
19 | All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. |
20 | My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. |
21 | Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! |
22 | Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? |
23 | "Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! |
24 | Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! |
25 | For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; |
26 | and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, |
27 | whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! |
28 | If you say, `How we will pursue him!' and, `The root of the matter is found in him'; |
29 | be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment." |