Job 19

¹Then Job answered and said:

²“How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?

³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?

⁴And even if it be true that I have erred,
my error remains with myself.

5If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,

⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.

⁷Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call for help, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.

⁹He has stripped from me my glory
and taken the crown from my head.

¹⁰He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts me as his adversary.

¹²His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp against me
and encamp around my tent.

¹³“He has put my brothers far from me,
and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.

¹⁴My relatives have failed me,
my close friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

¹⁶I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.

¹⁷My breath is strange to my wife,
and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.

¹⁸Even young children despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.

¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.

²⁰My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

²¹Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!

²²Why 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!

²⁴Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!

²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

²⁶And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,

²⁷whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!

²⁸If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’

²⁹be afraid of the sword,
for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
that you may know there is a judgment.”

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