Job

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. He has plucked my hope 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 I will see God in my flesh, ²⁷whom I, even I, will see on my side. My eyes will 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.”