Job Replies: Miserable Comforters Are You

16 Then Job answered and said:

2  “I have heard emany such things;

fmiserable comforters are you all.

3  Shall gwindy words have an end?

Or what provokes you that you answer?

4  I also could speak as you do,

if you were in my place;

I could join words together against you

and hshake my head at you.

5  I could strengthen you with my mouth,

and the solace of my lips would assuage your pain.

6  “If I speak, my pain is not assuaged,

and if I forbear, how much of it leaves me?

7  Surely now God has worn me out;

ihe has1 made desolate all my company.

8  And he has shriveled me up,

which is ja witness against me,

and my kleanness has risen up against me;

it testifies to my face.

9  He has ltorn me in his wrath mand hated me;

he has ngnashed his teeth at me;

my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.

10  Men have ogaped at me with their mouth;

they have pstruck me insolently on the cheek;

they qmass themselves together against me.

11  God gives me up to the ungodly

and casts me into the hands of the wicked.

12  I was at ease, and he broke me apart;

he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces;

he set me up as his rtarget;

13  his sarchers surround me.

He slashes open my kidneys tand does not spare;

he upours out my gall on the ground.

14  He breaks me with vbreach upon breach;

he wruns upon me like a warrior.

15  I have sewed xsackcloth upon my skin

and have laid ymy strength zin the dust.

16  My face is red with weeping,

and on my eyelids is adeep darkness,

17  although there is no bviolence in my hands,

and my prayer is pure.

18  “O earth, ccover not my blood,

and let my dcry find no resting place.

19  Even now, behold, my ewitness is in heaven,

and he who testifies for me is fon high.

20  My friends gscorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

21  that he would hargue the case of a man with God,

as2 a son of man does with his neighbor.

22  For when a few years have come

I shall go the way ifrom which I shall not return.