Job 19

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."