Job's reply

1Then Job answered:

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 humiliation 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 aloud, 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 siegeworks19.12 Heb their way 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.

14My kinsfolk and my close friends have failed me;

15the guests in my house have forgotten me;

my maidservants count me as a stranger;

I have become an alien in their eyes.

16I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must beseech him with my mouth.

17I am repulsive to my wife,

loathsome to the sons 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 cleave 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, 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 graven in the rock for ever!

25For I know that my Redeemer19.25 Or Vindicator lives,

and at last he will stand upon the earth;19.25 Or dust

26and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

then from19.26 Or without my flesh I shall see God,19.26 The meaning of this verse is uncertain

27whom I shall see on my side,19.27 Or 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.”