Job 19–20

19Why do you keep tormenting me with words?

³Time after time you insult me

and show no shame for the way you abuse me.

⁴Even if I have done wrong,

how does that hurt you?

⁵You think you are better than I am,

and regard my troubles as proof of my guilt.

⁶Can’t you see it is God who has done this?

He has set a trap to catch me.

⁷I protest against his violence,

but no one is listening;

no one hears my cry for justice.

⁸God has blocked the way, and I can’t get through;

he has hidden my path in darkness.

⁹He has taken away all my wealth

and destroyed my reputation.

¹⁰He batters me from every side.

He uproots my hope

and leaves me to wither and die.

¹¹God is angry and rages against me;

he treats me like his worst enemy.

¹²He sends his army to attack me;

they dig trenches and lay siege to my tent.

¹³God has made my own family forsake me;

I am a stranger to those who knew me;

¹⁴my relatives and friends are gone.

¹⁵Those who were guests in my house have forgotten me;

my servant women treat me like a stranger and a foreigner.

¹⁶When I call a servant, he doesn’t answer—

even when I beg him to help me.

¹⁷My wife can’t stand the smell of my breath,

and my own brothers won’t come near me.

¹⁸Children despise me and laugh when they see me.

¹⁹My closest friends look at me with disgust;

those I loved most have turned against me.

²⁰My skin hangs loose on my bones;

I have barely escaped with my life.^m

²¹You are my friends! Take pity on me!

The hand of God has struck me down.

²²Why must you persecute me as God does?

Haven’t you tormented me enough?

²³How I wish that someone would remember my words

and record them in a book!

²⁴Or with a chisel carve my words in stone

and write them so that they would last for ever.ⁿ

²⁵But I know there is someone in heaven

who will come at last to my defence.

²⁶Even after my skin is eaten by disease,

while still in this body^o I will see God.^p

²⁷I will see him with my own eyes,

and he will not be a stranger.

My courage failed because you said,

²⁸“How can we torment him?”

You looked for some excuse to attack me.

²⁹But now, be afraid of the sword—

the sword that brings God’s wrath on sin,

so that you will know there is one who judges.^q

20Job, you upset me. Now I’m impatient to answer.

³What you have said is an insult,

but I know how to reply to you.

⁴Surely you know that from ancient times,

when human beings were first placed on earth,

⁵no wicked people have been happy for long.

⁶They may grow great, towering to the sky,

so great that their heads reach the clouds,

⁷but they will be blown away like dust.

Those who used to know them

will wonder where they have gone.

⁸They will vanish like a dream, like a vision at night,

and never be seen again.

⁹The wicked will disappear from the place where they used to live;

¹⁰and their children will make good what they stole from the poor.

¹¹Their bodies used to be young and vigorous,

but soon they will turn to dust.

^12–13Evil tastes so good to them

that they keep some in their mouths to enjoy its flavour.

¹⁴But in their stomachs the food turns bitter,

as bitter as any poison could be.

¹⁵The wicked vomit up the wealth they stole;

God takes it back, even out of their stomachs.

¹⁶What evil people swallow is like poison;

it kills them like the bite of a deadly snake.

¹⁷They will not live to see rivers of olive oil^r

or streams that flow with milk and honey.

¹⁸They will have to give up all they have worked for;

they will have no chance to enjoy their wealth,

¹⁹because they oppressed and neglected the poor

and seized houses someone else had built.

²⁰Their greed is never satisfied.

²¹When they eat, there is nothing left over,

but now their prosperity comes to an end.

²²At the height of their success

all the weight of misery will crush them.

²³Let them eat all they want!

God will punish them in fury and anger.

²⁴When they try to escape from an iron sword,

a bronze bow will shoot them down.

²⁵Arrows stick through their bodies;

the shiny points drip with their blood,

and terror grips their hearts.

²⁶Everything they have saved is destroyed;

a fire not lit by human hands

burns them and all their families.

²⁷Heaven reveals their sin,

and the earth gives testimony against them.

²⁸All their wealth will be destroyed

in the flood of God’s anger.

²⁹This is the fate of the wicked,

the fate that God assigns to them.