1Then Job answered and said:
2“How long will you torment my soul and crush me with words?
3These ten times you have insulted me; you are not ashamed to wrong me.
4And even if indeed I have erred, my error lodges with myself.
5If indeed you exalt yourselves against me and argue my disgrace against me,
6then know that it is God who has wronged me and closed his net around 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 over my paths he has set darkness.
9He has stripped my glory from me and removed the crown from my head.
10He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone; he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
11He has kindled his anger against me and counts me among his adversaries.
12Together his troops come; they cast up their siege-road against me and encamp around my tent.
13He has put my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
14My relatives have ceased, and my close friends have forgotten me.
15The guests of my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
16I call to my servant, and he does not answer; I must plead with him with my own mouth.
17My breath is repugnant to my wife, and I am loathsome to the sons of my womb.
18Even young children despise me; when I rise, they speak against me.
19All the men of my intimate circle abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me.
22Why do you pursue me as God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
23Oh that my words were now written down! Oh that they were inscribed in a scroll!
24that with an iron stylus and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!
25But I myself know that my redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the dust.
26And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God;
27whom I myself shall see for myself, and my own eyes have seen, and not another. My inmost being is consumed within me.
28If you say, ‘How shall we pursue him?’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
29be afraid for yourselves of the sword, for wrath brings the punishments of the sword, so that you may know there is judgment.
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