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Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives

 Then Job answered and said:

² “How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?
³ These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?
⁴ And even if it be true that I have erred,
my error remains with myself.
⁵ If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,
⁶ know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
⁷ Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call 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 from me my glory
and taken the crown from my head.
¹⁰ He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
¹¹ He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts me as his adversary.
¹² His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp^[a] against me
and encamp around my tent.

¹³ “He has put my brothers far from me,
and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
¹⁴ My relatives have failed me,
my close friends have forgotten me.
¹⁵ The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
¹⁶ I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
¹⁷ My breath is strange to my wife,
and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
¹⁸ Even young children despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.
¹⁹ All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
²⁰ My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
²¹ Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
²² Why 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!
²⁴ Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
²⁵ For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.^[b]
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in^[c] my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷ whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!
²⁸ If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
²⁹ be afraid of the sword,
for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
that you may know there is a judgment.”

Footnotes:

1. Job 19:12 Hebrew their way
2. Job 19:25 Hebrew dust
3. Job 19:26 Or without

Cross references:

1. Job 19:3 : Gen. 31:7
2. Job 19:5 : Ps. 35:26; 38:16; 55:12
3. Job 19:6 : [ch. 8:3; 34:12; Lam. 3:36]
4. Job 19:7 : ch. 24:12; Hab. 1:2; [Lam. 3:8]
5. Job 19:8 : Lam. 3:7, 9; Hos. 2:6; [ch. 3:23; 13:27]
6. Job 19:9 : Ps. 89:44
7. Job 19:9 : Ps. 89:39; Lam. 5:16; [ch. 29:14]
8. Job 19:10 : ch. 27:21; [ch. 10:21; 14:20]
9. Job 19:11 : See ch. 13:24
10. Job 19:12 : [ch. 10:17; 25:2]
11. Job 19:12 : ch. 30:12
12. Job 19:13 : Ps. 69:8; [ch. 6:15]
13. Job 19:13 : [Ps. 31:11; 88:8, 18]
14. Job 19:14 : Ps. 38:11
15. Job 19:14 : Ps. 55:13
16. Job 19:15 : [Gen. 17:27; Matt. 10:36]
17. Job 19:17 : ch. 2:9
18. Job 19:17 : ch. 3:10
19. Job 19:18 : [2 Kgs. 2:23]
20. Job 19:19 : [Ps. 41:9; 55:13, 14]
21. Job 19:20 : Ps. 102:5; [Lam. 4:8]
22. Job 19:21 : ch. 1:11; Isa. 53:4
23. Job 19:22 : [Ps. 69:26]
24. Job 19:23 : Isa. 30:8
25. Job 19:24 : Jer. 17:1
26. Job 19:25 : ch. 30:23
27. Job 19:25 : Isa. 43:14; 44:6, 24; 49:7; [Gen. 48:16; Ps. 19:14; 103:4; 1 Thess. 1:10]
28. Job 19:25 : ch. 41:33
29. Job 19:26 : Ps. 17:15; 1 Cor. 13:12; 1 John 3:2
30. Job 19:27 : [Prov. 27:2]
31. Job 19:27 : [Ps. 73:26]
32. Job 19:28 : [See ver. 22 above]; [Ps. 69:26]
33. Job 19:29 : Eccles. 12:14; See Ps. 58:11