Job 19

¹Then Job answered,

²“How long will you torment me, and crush me with words?

³You have reproached me ten times. You aren’t ashamed that you attack me.

⁴If it is true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.

⁵If indeed you will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach;

⁶know now that God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with his net.

⁷“Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard. I cry for help, but there is no justice.

⁸He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths.

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

¹⁰He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone. My hope he has plucked up like a tree.

¹¹He has also kindled his wrath against me. He counts me among his adversaries.

¹²His troops come on together, build a siege ramp against me, and encamp around my tent.

¹³“He has put my brothers far from me. My acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

¹⁴My relatives have gone away. My familiar friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵Those who dwell in my house and my maids consider me a stranger. I am an alien in their sight.

¹⁶I call to my servant, and he gives me no answer. I beg him with my mouth.

¹⁷My breath is offensive to my wife. I am loathsome to the children of my own mother.

¹⁸Even young children despise me. If I arise, they speak against me.

¹⁹All my familiar friends abhor me. They whom I loved have turned against me.

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

²¹“Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends; for the hand of God has touched me.

²²Why do you persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?

²³“Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

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

²⁵But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.

²⁶After my skin is destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God,

²⁷Whom I, even I, shall see on my side. My eyes shall see, and not as a stranger. “My heart is consumed within me.

²⁸If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ because the root of the matter is found in me,

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