16
1 Then Job answered:
2 “I have heard many such things;
miserable comforters are you all.
3 Is there an end to words of wind?
What provokes you to answer?
4 I too could speak as you do if you were in my place.
I could string words together against you and shake my head at you.
5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the comfort of my lips would ease your pain.
6 If I speak, my pain is not eased;
if I stop, what leaves me?
7 But now he has worn me out;
you have devastated all my company.
8 You have seized me, and it has become a witness against me;
my leanness rises up against me and testifies to my face.
9 In his wrath he tears me and bears hostility toward me;
he gnashes his teeth at me.
My enemy sharpens his eyes against me.
10 They open their mouths against me;
with contempt they strike my cheeks;
together they mass against me.
11 God hands me over to the unjust and throws me into the hands of the wicked.
12 I was at ease, but he shattered me;
he seized me by the neck and smashed me to pieces.
He set me up as his target.
13 His archers surround me;
he pierces my kidneys without pity and pours my gall on the ground.
14 He breaks through me with breach upon breach;
he rushes at me like a warrior.
15 I have sewn sackcloth over my skin and thrust my horn into the dust.
16 My face is red from weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death,
17 though there is no violence in my hands and my prayer is pure.
18 Earth, do not cover my blood;
let my cry have no resting place!
19 Even now, look, my witness is in heaven, and the one who testifies for me is on high.
20 My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
21 that he would plead for a man with God, as a son of man pleads for his friend!
22 For a few years will come, and I will go the way from which I will not return.