19
1 Then Job answered:
2 “How long will you torment my soul and crush me with words?
3 Ten times now you have humiliated me;
you are not ashamed to mistreat me.
4 Even if I have indeed erred, my error remains with me.
5 If you indeed exalt yourselves against me and argue my disgrace against me,
6 know then that God has wronged me and encircled me with his net.
7 Look, I cry, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I cry for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has put darkness on my paths.
9 He has stripped me of my glory and removed the crown from my head.
10 He has torn me down on every side, and I am gone;
he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 He has kindled his anger against me and counted me among his adversaries.
12 His troops come together;
they build up their way against me and camp around my tent.
13 He has put my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances have become strangers to me.
14 My relatives have withdrawn, and my close friends have forgotten me.
15 Those who dwell in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
16 I call my servant, but he does not answer;
with my own mouth I plead with him.
17 My breath is repulsive to my wife, and I am loathsome to the sons of my own body.
18 Even young children despise me;
when I rise, they speak against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones cling to my skin and flesh;
I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!
22 Why do you persecute me like God and never have enough of my flesh?
23 If only my words were written!
If only they were inscribed in a book,
24 with an iron stylus and lead, carved in the rock forever!
25 I know that my Redeemer lives, and as the last he will stand upon the dust.
26 And after this skin of mine has been destroyed, in my flesh I will see God,
27 whom I will see for myself, whom my own eyes will behold, and not another.
My inmost being grows faint within me.
28 If you say, ‘How shall we persecute him?’ and claim that the root of the matter is found in me,
29 be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, so that you may know there is judgment.”