Job 19

¹Then Job answered and said :

²How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words ?

³These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me?

⁴And even if it be true that I have erred , my error remains with myself.

⁵If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me,

⁶know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me.

⁷Behold , I cry out , Violence ! but I am not answered ; I call for help , but there is no justice .

⁸He has walled up my way , so that I cannot pass , and he has set darkness upon my paths .

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

¹⁰He breaks me down on every side , and I am gone , and my hope has he pulled up like a tree .

¹¹He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary .

¹²His troops come on together ; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent .

¹³He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.

¹⁴My relatives have failed me, my friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger ; I have become a foreigner in their eyes .

¹⁶I call to my servant , but he gives me no answer ; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.

¹⁷My breath is strange to my wife , and I am a stench to the children of my own mother .

¹⁸Even children despise me; when I rise they talk against me.

¹⁹All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.

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

²¹Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends , for the hand of God has touched me!

²²Why do you, like God , pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh ?

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

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

²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives , and at the last he will stand upon the earth .

²⁶And after my skin has been thus destroyed , yet in my flesh I shall see God ,

²⁷whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold , and not another . My heart faints within me!

²⁸If you say , How we will pursue him! and, The root of the matter is found in him,

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