Job 19
1 Job replied:
2 “How long will you torment me and crush me with words?
3 You have humiliated me ten times now; you are not ashamed to mistreat me.
4 Even if I have truly gone wrong, my error remains with me.
5 Do you really mean to make yourselves great over me and prove my disgrace against me?
6 Know, then, that God has twisted me and closed his net around me.
7 If I cry, ‘Violence!’, I am not answered; if I call for help, there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way, and I cannot pass; he has put darkness on my paths.
9 He has stripped me of my honor and taken the crown from my head.
10 He tears me down on every side, and I am gone; he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11 His anger has burned against me, and he counts me as one of his enemies.
12 His troops come together, raise a ramp against me, and camp around my tent.
13 He has driven my brothers far from me, and those who know me have become strangers to me.
14 My relatives have left me, and my friends have forgotten me.
15 The guests in my house and my servant women treat me as a stranger; in their eyes I have become a foreigner.”
16 “I call my servant, but he does not answer; I have to beg him with my own mouth.
17 My breath is strange to my wife, and I disgust the children of my own body.
18 Even the children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me.
19 All my closest friends detest me, and those I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones cling to my skin and flesh, and I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.
21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, you who are my friends, for God’s hand has struck me!
22 Why do you pursue me as God does, and never have enough of my flesh?
23 If only my words were written down! If only they were inscribed in a book!
24 Inscribed with an iron chisel and lead, forever, on rock!
25 I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at last he will stand upon the dust.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed like this, still in my flesh I will see God.
27 I myself will see him; my eyes will see him, and not another’s. My heart is consumed within me.
28 You say, ‘How shall we pursue him?’ The root of the matter is found in me.
29 Be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the sword’s punishment, so that you may know there is judgment.”
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