| 1 | Then Job answered: |
| 2 | How long will you vex
and
torment me and break me in pieces with words? |
| 3 | These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you make yourselves strange [harden yourselves against me and deal severely with me]. |
| 4 | And if it were true that I have erred, my error would remain with me [I would be conscious of it]. |
| 5 | If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and plead against me my reproach
and
humiliation, |
| 6 | Know that God has overthrown
and
put me in the wrong and has closed His net about me. |
| 7 | Behold, I cry out, Violence! but I am not heard; I cry aloud for help, 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 me of my glory and taken the crown from my head. |
| 10 | He has broken me down on every side, and I am gone; my hope has He pulled up like a tree. |
| 11 | He has also kindled His wrath against me, and He counts me as one of His adversaries. |
| 12 | His troops come together and cast up their way
and
siege works 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 have failed me, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. |
| 15 | Those who live temporarily in my house and my maids count me as a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. |
| 16 | I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer, though I beseech him with words. |
| 17 | I am repulsive to my wife and loathsome to the children of my own mother. |
| 18 | Even young children despise me; when I get up, they speak against me. |
| 19 | All the men of my council
and
my familiar friends abhor me; those whom I loved are turned against me. |
| 20 | My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin
or
gums 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, as if you were God, pursue
and
persecute me? [Acting like wild beasts] why are you not satisfied with my flesh? |
| 23 | Oh, that the words I now speak were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book [carved on a tablet of stone]! |
| 24 | That with an iron pen and [molten] lead they were graven in the rock forever! |
| 25 | For I know that my Redeemer
and
Vindicator lives, and at last He [the Last One] will stand upon the earth. |
| 26 | And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh
or
without it I shall see God, |
| 27 | Whom I, even I, shall see for myself
and
on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away
and
is consumed within me. |
| 28 | If you say, How we will pursue him! [and continue to persecute me with the claim] that the root [cause] of all these [afflictions] is found in me, |
| 29 | Then beware
and
be afraid of the sword [of divine vengeance], for wrathful are the punishments of that sword, that you may know there is a judgment. |
Cross references:
-
Job 19:25 : Isa. 44:6; 48:12.
|