-
19:1 Then Job answered: 19:2 "How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? 19:3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? 19:4 And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me. 19:5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, 19:6 know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. 19:7 Even when I cry out, 'Violence!' I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice. 19:8 He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. 19:9 He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. 19:10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. 19:11 He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. 19:12 His troops come on together; they have thrown up siegeworks against me, and encamp around my tent. 19:13 "He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 19:14 My relatives and my close friends have failed me; 19:15 the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. 19:16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. 19:17 My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. 19:18 Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. 19:19 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. 19:20 My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 19:21 Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! 19:22 Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh? 19:23 "O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! 19:24 O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! 19:25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; 19:26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, 19:27 whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! 19:28 If you say, 'How we will persecute him!' and, 'The root of the matter is found in him'; 19:29 be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment."