Job 19

JOB’S REPLY TO BILDAD

19Then Job answered:

²How long will you torment me and crush me with words?

³You have humiliated me ten times now,

and you mistreat^A me without shame.^l

⁴Even if it is true that I have sinned,

my mistake concerns only^B me.

⁵If you really want to appear superior^m to me

and would use my disgrace as evidence against me,

⁶then understand that it is God who has wronged me

and caught me in his net.ⁿ

⁷I cry out, “Violence!” but get no response;^o

I call for help, but there is no justice.

⁸He has blocked^p my way so that I cannot pass through;

he has veiled my paths with darkness.^q

⁹He has stripped me of my honor

and removed the crown from my head.

¹⁰He tears me down on every side so that I am ruined.^C

He uproots my hope like a tree.^r

¹¹His anger^s burns against me,

and he regards me as one of his enemies.^t

¹²His troops advance together;

they construct a ramp^D against me

and camp^u around my tent.

¹³He has removed my brothers from me;

my acquaintances have abandoned me.^v

¹⁴My relatives stop coming by,

and my close friends have forgotten me.

¹⁵My house guests^E and female servants regard me as a stranger;

I am a foreigner in their sight.^w

¹⁶I call for my servant, but he does not answer,

even if I beg him with my own mouth.

¹⁷My breath is offensive to my wife,

and my own family^F finds me repulsive.

¹⁸Even young boys scorn me.

When I stand up, they mock me.^x

¹⁹All of my best friends^G despise me,^y

and those I love have turned against me.^z

²⁰My skin and my flesh cling to my bones;

I have escaped with only the skin of my teeth.

²¹Have mercy on me, my friends,^a have mercy,

for God’s hand^b has struck me.^c

²²Why do you persecute me as God does?

Will you never get enough of my flesh?

²³I wish that my words were written down,

that they were recorded on a scroll

²⁴or were inscribed in stone forever

by an iron stylus and lead!

²⁵But I know that my Redeemer lives,^Ad

and at the end he will stand on the dust.^e

²⁶Even after my skin has been destroyed,^B

yet I will see God in^C my flesh.^f

²⁷I will see him myself;

my eyes will look at him, and not as a stranger.^D

My heart longs^E within me.^g

²⁸If you say, “How will we pursue him,

since the root of the problem lies with him?”^F

²⁹then be afraid of the sword,

because wrath brings punishment by the sword,^h

so that you may know there is a judgment.