Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives

19 Then Job answered and said:

2  “How long will you torment me

and break me in pieces with words?

3  These wten times you have cast reproach upon me;

are you not ashamed to wrong me?

4  And even if it be true that I have erred,

my error remains with myself.

5  If indeed you xmagnify yourselves against me

and make my disgrace an argument against me,

6  know then that God has yput me in the wrong

and closed his net about me.

7  Behold, I zcry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;

I call for help, but there is no justice.

8  He has awalled up my way, so that I cannot pass,

and he has set darkness upon my paths.

9  He has bstripped from me my glory

and taken the ccrown from my head.

10  He breaks me down on every side, and I dam gone,

and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.

11  He has kindled his wrath against me

and ecounts me as his adversary.

12  His ftroops come on together;

they have gcast up their siege ramp1 against me

and encamp around my tent.

13  “He has put my hbrothers far from me,

and ithose who knew me are wholly estranged from me.

14  My relatives jhave failed me,

my close kfriends have forgotten me.

15  The guests lin my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;

I have become a foreigner in their eyes.

16  I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;

I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.

17  My breath is strange to my mwife,

and I am a stench to the children of nmy own mother.

18  Even young ochildren despise me;

when I rise they talk against me.

19  All my pintimate friends abhor me,

and those whom I loved have turned against me.

20  My qbones stick to my skin and to my flesh,

and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

21  Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,

for the hand of God has rtouched me!

22  Why do you, like God, spursue me?

Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

23  “Oh that my words were written!

Oh that they were tinscribed in a book!

24  Oh that with an iron upen and lead

they were engraved in the rock forever!

25  For I vknow that my wRedeemer lives,

and at the last he will stand upon the xearth.2

26  And after my skin has been thus destroyed,

yet in3 my flesh I shall ysee God,

27  whom I shall see for myself,

and my eyes shall behold, and not zanother.

My heart afaints within me!

28  If you say, ‘How we will spursue him!’

and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’4

29  be afraid of the sword,

for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,

that you may know there is ba judgment.”