Job Reaffirms His Innocence

1Then Job answered:

2‘I have heard many such things;

miserable comforters are you all.

3Have windy words no limit?

Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?

4I also could talk as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you,

and shake my head at you.

5I could encourage you with my mouth,

and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

6‘If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,

and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?

7Surely now God has worn me out;

he has16.7 Heb you have made desolate all my company.

8And he has16.8 Heb you have shrivelled me up,

which is a witness against me;

my leanness has risen up against me,

and it testifies to my face.

9He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me;

he has gnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

10They have gaped at me with their mouths;

they have struck me insolently on the cheek;

they mass themselves together against me.

11God gives me up to the ungodly,

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

12I was at ease, and he broke me in two;

he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;

he set me up as his target;

13his archers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys, and shows no mercy;

he pours out my gall on the ground.

14He bursts upon me again and again;

he rushes at me like a warrior.

15I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin,

and have laid my strength in the dust.

16My face is red with weeping,

and deep darkness is on my eyelids,

17though there is no violence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

18‘O earth, do not cover my blood;

let my outcry find no resting-place.

19Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,

and he that vouches for me is on high.

20My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

21that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,

as16.21 Syr Vg Tg: Heb and one does for a neighbour.

22For when a few years have come,

I shall go the way from which I shall not return.